Irving Independent School District

The Life Cycle of a Salmon is a part of the leveled BlastOff! Readers: Life Cycles series. Salmon is a level 3 entry, which is designed to advance “early readers toward fluency through increased text and concept load, less reliance on visuals, longer sentences, and more literary language.” The book contains the usual elements of nonfiction, including a table of contents, a glossary, a bibliography, directions for additional web resources (using Fact Surfer, a weak search engine) and a few diagrams. Bold print words can be located in the glossary at the back of the book. The primary description of the salmon reads, “Salmon are fish with shiny scales. They are powerful swimmers.” While this is technically true, it is a very weak description of the fish in that hundreds, if not thousands, of fish fit this description. On the page facing this description (or lack thereof) is an inset showing a close up of the salmon’s scales. There is no caption labeling this picture, which could spawn a problem: the reviewer had no idea what this picture was and thought that it was some strange optical illusion composed of several swimming salmon. It took a few minutes to realize that they are actually fish scales. The text, while informative and well-written, does include some rough spots, as well. Many of the bold print vocabulary words in the book can be somewhat decoded by using context clues. When the word “spawn” is introduced, there are no immediate clues present for a reader to use to figure out the meaning of this word. It is not until 5 pages later that the novice salmon scholar can finally locate some text which helps him or her to deduce what “spawn” means. Yes, there is a glossary with a definition of the term but considering that one purpose of the book is to educate students about the life cycle of a salmon,