50 States Through Reading: Alaska

 

Whew....we just finished traveling through Alaska in our literature. Alaska became a state in 1959 and is the 49th state to join. The capital is Juneau. The state bird is willow ptarmigan and the state flower flower is forget-me-not. My kids were excited to learn about Alaska which is so far away from our house that it would be hard for us to travel. We are in the middle of the United States, the direct middle. Also, my kids were pretty excited to learn about the place where we almost lived. I got a job offer in Alaska the the bush to teach Inuits. But, I decided not to take it and decided to stay close to family. 

The Stolen Sun: A Story of Native Alaska by Amanda Hall was published in February 2002. In this book it is about the folk tale in Alaska. When Raven first created people and animals to fill the beautiful world beneath his great tent of sky, a song of joy burst from his throat and brought everything to life. But his song began to be drowned by shouting and violence as the people grew greedy. Find out how Raven handled it. 

We really enjoyed this book about this folk tale. We don't hear much folktales and it was really neat to read a folktale based in one of our states. The illustrations in this book are amazing and really help set the story up as I read it the kids loved to look at the pictures. They also loved to pick out similarities to this to our religion beliefs. The text in this book is easy to read and easy for kids to understand. The words were simple that even my two year old could understand the text. This book is worth checking out. 

Grizzly Bears of Alaska: Explore the Wild World of Bears by Debbie S. Miller and photos by Patrick J. Endres was published in March 2014. The book is full of amazing images by a wildlife photographer. Alaska's population of 30,000 grizzlies is the healthiest in any American state. Learn all about the bears in this book. 

My kids loved the photos in this book and I loved that they were photos and not drawings. They loved looking at the amazing bears as I read the words. Some of the text went over the heads of my two younger kids. I had to explain some of the vocabulary words to all of them. they loved how they talked about the difference between grizzly bears and brown bears. This book is really neat to explore. 

Alaska (A True Book: My United States) by Josh Gregory was published in September 2017. This book talks about Alaska relatives that are isolated from the rest of the country. It has a unique culture that makes it stand out from the other states. The readers will tour this icy state and see how people live. They will also learn about the history of the states and the government.  

This one is really hard to read even for my nine year old. I read it to them but skipped around in the book to help my kids make sense of the book. We took some of the facts out and read some of them. My kids really liked the pictures and graphics through out the book. We love seeing all the famous people from Alaska and the maps. This book is full of info for all kids. I recommend this for fifth grade and up though. 

Some of the activities we did for Alaska was we colored our Alaska into our United States map. Then we also colored the state flag. Here is where you can find the downloads for both. 

Check out other books on our 50 States Through Reading here. 

Check out other books Miles is reading here.