Do Ducks Live in the Desert? Non-Fiction picture book

Author: Michael Dahl
Illustrator: Anne Haberstroh
Award Won: Distinguished Achievement Award from the Association of Educational Publishers
Date of Publication:2004
Age recommendation: ages 5 to 8
Group represented: Animal life



This book starts out asking questions about where certain types of animals live such as ducks, oxen, periwinkles, meadowlarks, sloths, water striders, octopuses, moles, markhors, and camels. The authors asks if each of these animals lives in the desert. Then the author will go on to say that they do not live in the desert and where that particular animal lives. The book also explains some characteristics about the animals habitat and what the animal likes to eat. The last animal is the camel. It is then explained that the camel does in fact live in the desert. The very last page is a summary page of all the animals in the book and their habitats.



The illustrations in this book are very colorful and help to draw the eye of the reader to the details of the animals natural habitat. The pictures are drawn to look like they go with the font used for the wording so everything fits together. I think looking at the pictures makes learning the facts more interesting for the students.



I think this would be a nice book to use in a classroom on animal habitats because the animals talked about in this book are not typically discussed or learned about. Some of the animals I didn't know anything about as an adult. Students could pick another uncommon animal not mentioned in this book and research some facts about it and draw a picture of what it looks like.