Smart-opedia: The Amazing Book About Everything

Title: Smart-opedia: The Amazing Book About Everything     
Author: Eve Drobot, Translator - Various authors contributed   
Illustrator: Various Illustrators and Photographers   
Publisher: Maple Tree Press  (Owlkids, Inc)
Publication Date: 2007   
Genre/Format: Nonfiction-Encyclopedia/Dictionary/Reference Picture Book 
Summary: If you have questions, this book has answers! Jam-packed with information, photos, and illustrations about astronomy, the Earth, planets, animals, the human body, history, today's world, the arts, science, and technology.
What I Think: This book is just completely chock full of information.  I love it.  To help readers get started, there is an introduction that explains different text features kids can look for as they are reading.  Being able to navigate non-fiction text and use the text features is very important.  I love that this book points out some of the different text features and how they will be presented throughout the book so kids can be aware of them and recognize them when they pop up.
     Another aspect of this book that I love is the Know-It-All News.  There are two-page layouts that actual span the length of the book so you have to turn the book to read it.  The information is set up like a newspaper front page.  I feel like giving kids exposure to newspaper articles that they can read is tricky sometimes.  I love that this includes this element of some newspaper exposure because I think it's great for them to get as much exposure to a newspaper as they can.  
Read Together: K - 6 
Read Alone: 3 - 6 
Read With: Do Not Open by John Farndon, Guinness World Records 2011, other non-fiction texts about the topics in this book for further exploration 
Snatch of Text: 

"Have we explored all there is to see?

No, there are still remote areas that have no contact with the modern world. It could be a part of the Amazon rainforest, a tiny island, a patch of desert... Some are uninhabited, some are lived in by small groups of people who have adapted to life in the most difficult conditions.  These places still hold mysteries to solve, and there are millions of plants and animals left to discover." p. 27
Reading Strategies to Practice: Activating Background Knowledge, Using Non-Fiction Text Features, Asking Questions, Making Connections 
Writing Strategies to Practice: Expository   
Writing Prompts: Choose a topic from Smart-opedia and then do some more research on that topic.  Create your own piece of non-fiction text to represent the information you discovered.  You might create your own front page of a newspaper, a blog, a brochure, or a pamphlet, but be creative and use non-fiction text features to help your reader! 
Topics Covered: Integration - Science  
Translated to Spanish: No