The Amazing Octopus Book

If you need a straight-forward, 400-ish Lexile nonfiction text on the differences between crocodiles and alligators, then Snap! fits the bill. If you're looking for a bit more textual meat with your basic facts, you might be disappointed.

I used this book within the Sprint Reading program from Scholastic. My 3rd grade group of students liked it, mostly because they are interested in animals of all kinds, however the text lost their attention as the book study went on. They had great questions that the book did not answer, and the photos needed captions, for goodness sake!

On the plus side, the book's shortcomings precipitated invention--and some fun reading-related activities. Students liked Googling their questions and adding the answers to the KWL chart; they created their own glossary of content-specific vocabulary words; and added captions of their own to photos of crocodiles. Sometimes it's not the book, but the readers.

P.S. Pair with Good Ship Crocodile for a fiction connection!