5/5

This book is awesome for introducing and talking about mathematical concepts like scale. The art is really cool and helpful for understanding, you guessed it, the actual size of things. It includes a huge eyeball (of a squid), a tiny fish, and the tongue of an anteater. The way the author/illustrator uses the art to depict the actual size of things makes the book very educational, approachable, and engaging. I purchased this book for my nephew and he enjoyed reading it and learning about the different animals, but especially enjoyed the illustrations.
For my own use, as a middle school teacher of English to multilingual students, I can see this being very useful to put together comparative and superlative sentence frames for students to compare the length and weight of different animals and practice the terms of measurement. The animals and art help this become.a more engaging practice task that they can do in partners or small groups. ( )

Steve Jenkins! His informational books always bring high interest and amazing facts that captivate readers. This book is another great one. Actual Size is filled with animals and illustrations of their actual size, some it is the entire animal, like the atlas moth, with the fact "so large that it is often mistaken for a bird." Or some animals Jenkins focuses on one aspect of the animal like the length of the giant anteater's two-foot-long tongue. The book also has great additional information about each animal for the reader at the back of the book. ( )

Another great book for a measurement lesson in 5th grade. Rather dull, but I know children would love the pictures and it could be used to create other lifesize models that we measure ourselves.

Summary: It is a fun book to use to teach children about the measurements of eighteen different animals.