Read page 3 together first: say the four pictured words, otter, river, fur and rock, and point to each picture. Every other word in the story can be sounded out or is a common sight word such as the, is and has. If a page-3 word stops your child, turn back to its picture; for any other word, sound it out together rather than guessing from the art. Pages 22 and 23 give the facts and sources. To read together, try Fold 2, Hello, Otter!
The facts behind the pictures
A North American river otter has webbed toes and strong claws on all four feet. The webs are the skin between its toes.
A river otter pushes itself along and steers with its thick, muscular tail, a rudder for sharp turns underwater.
Otters have no blubber; dense fur that traps air keeps them warm. Sea otters have the thickest fur of any mammal on Earth.
Otters groom for hours to keep their coats waterproof, combing their fur and blowing air into it.
An otter holds its breath to dive for food, and its ears and nostrils seal tightly shut underwater.
River otters eat mainly slow-swimming fish, crayfish, frogs and water insects, the bugs on this page.
North American river otters slide on their bellies down mud and snow, both to travel and to play.
Kelp, tools and clean rivers
From here the book turns to sea otters. Large lungs work like life jackets that help a sea otter float on its back.
Sea otters rest together in floating groups called rafts, and a sea otter wraps itself in kelp to float safely.
A sea otter uses a rock on its chest to crack open shells, and keeps food and tools in a loose skin pocket under each arm.
Pounding a shell on the rock cracks it open. Sea otters are one of the very few marine mammals known to use stone tools.
A sea otter mother carries her young pup on her chest while she floats on her back.
A sea otter pup's fluffy fur traps so much air that the pup floats like a cork and cannot dive.
River otters need clean, unpolluted fresh water and vanish from polluted rivers, so river otters in a river signal a healthy one.
A first book to read alone: a few short words on each page, repeated patterns, and the few hard words taught with pictures before the story starts.
- Ages
- 4–6
- Trim
- 6 × 9 in
- Pages
- 24
- Words
- 108
- Reading grade
- -0.2
See the printed pages
