Is This a House for Hermit Crab? - Softcover

PreSchool-Grade 2-- Across flecked, sand-colored pages crawls Hermit Crab--"scritch-scatch, scritch-scratch"--hunting for a new house. He tries a rock, some driftwood, a plastic pail, and a net. Nothing suits him until, washed to sea by a great wave, he must find a place to hide from his enemies. An empty sea snail's shell provides the perfect home. Schindler's pastel illustrations provide the perfect visualization of the text. Hermit Crab and his enemy, the pricklepine fish, appear so realistic that children will want to reach out and touch them. Prints in the sand left by Crab's moving "houses," foamy waves breaking on the beach, the vastness of the ocean floor and its quiet greenness--all can be felt in Schindler's pictures. The bits of repetition in the text are pared with the visual continuity of sand and sea and the outgrown shell left on the sand as Hermit Crab tries on each prospective home. This wonderful marriage of words and illlustrations is destined to become a well-loved storyhour tale. Eric Carle's A House for Hermit Crab (Picture Book Studio, 1987)--a bit more sophisticated--could be paired with McDonald's story for a lesson on the habits of this interesting sea creature and its symbiotic relationship with its neighbors. --Susan Scheps, Shaker Heights Public Library, OH
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