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| HATCHING CHICKS IN ROOM 6, Text and Photos by Caroline Arnold (Charlesbridge, 2017) |
On May 12, 2014, I was invited to do an author visit to Haynes Center for Enriched Studies elementary school in West Hills, California, in honor of Amy Werner, a librarian who had worked for many years in schools in the area. After my presentation, Jennifer Best, a kindergarten teacher at Haynes, asked me if I had ever written a book about hatching chicks. Each spring, she brought eggs to her classroom and hatched chicks. But, she told me, she couldn’t find any books that were written at the right level for her kindergarten students. I said I hadn’t written any books about chickens, although I had written a number of books about other kinds of birds. I liked the idea of a book about hatching chicks, and a year later I was in Mrs. Best’s classroom learning about eggs and chicks and documenting the process with photos. HATCHING CHICKS IN ROOM 6 is the result of that project.
I thank Jennifer Best and her students for sharing their chick hatching experience with me. The children’s enthusiasm was contagious as they learned about chickens and eggs and cared for the growing chicks. I am extremely grateful to Jennifer for her wealth of knowledge about hatching chicks in the classroom. I couldn’t have done the book without her. I also thank the children and their families for their cooperation throughout the process. The fourteen chicks who are the stars of the book are now adult chickens. It was a remarkable journey watching them hatch and grow.
I also thank my editor Alyssa Pusey for her careful editing of the text, art director Susan Sherman for the very attractive and readable design of the book, and all the staff of Charlesbridge for their contributions to the project.
For more about the book, go to the Hatching Chicks page at my website: http://www.carolinearnoldbooks.com/hatchingchicks.html
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