How is this an educational children's book?
- The book includes hundreds of teachable moments, which are educational opportunities built into the plot. Parents and teachers use these opportunities to discuss important math, language arts, science, and social studies concepts with children.
- There are fact boxes (called Knowledge Nuggets) which illustrate an important fact or concept. There are also wavy black boxes that tell the reader to pause for a second and consider an important detail, such as an earlier-stated fact or the importance of paying attention to important events. The rest of the teachable moments are curriculum concepts that are seamlessly woven into the story and have tiny reference codes, which indicate that they are state curriculum standards.
- Parents and teachers can just flip to the standards table in the back of the book to see details about the curriculum concept in the book. For example, the main character might be told that he has to be back in the classroom seven minutes before 1:30pm. At the end of the sentence, there would be a code, like M4. The parent or teacher could flip to the back of the book, find M4, and see that M4 is learning about elapsed time. This is a great opportunity to ask the student to figure out what time the character needs to return to class ask more elapsed time questions.
