Written by Katherine Ayres and illustrated by Nadine Bernard Westcott, Up Down and Around is Pennsylvania’s One Book, Every Young Child 2008 selection. The book is a short rhyming, read-aloud story that contains facts and true information about vegetables, bugs and gardens and lends itself to a variety of activities.
For example, after reading through the book once, an adult might assign each child the name of a vegetable in the book. When each child hears the name of his/her vegetable, he/she can jump up and twist and turn in the direction named: up down or around.
The informational children’s book Up Down and Around written by Katherine Ayres and illustrated by Nadine Bernard Westcott is Pennsylvania’s One Book, Every Young Child 2008 selection. In this picture book of rhymes, vegetables from okra to carrots to pumpkins grow in all directions: up, down and all around. When they can’t grow any bigger, it’s time for a harvest and for lunch!
As a child, author Katherine Ayres loved to play outside and to play in the dirt, especially in the mud. Today she still likes to hold crumbly, warm dirt in her hands, but she calls it gardening! She also enjoys another form of playing – playing with words - as she writes stories. “It allows me to keep childhood alive in my mind,” she confides.
Katherine Ayres teaches students to write at Chatham University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She has written books and magazine articles for children of all ages: young adult, middle-school and pre-schoolers. Many of her books are historical in nature, taking place in time periods that range from the Civil War to the turn-of-the-20th century to World War II. They are set in real places in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and Kentucky that the author has travelled to when researching the books.
Katherine Ayres first made up stories when she lay awake at bedtime listening to her parents, imagining what they were doing, and wondering what she was missing! She remembers telling other people fictional stories as if they were true. Sometimes she would let the listener know afterward that the story was made up. Sometimes she would not!
This non-fiction book is filled with true facts about vegetables, bugs and gardens. Using this book, a children’s library or day care center could plan days that revolve around the themes of planting, bugs, directions and eating.
The book lends itself to activities across a variety of interests: art (create prints from cut vegetables, draw a fantasy plant made from three different plants that grow in different directions), dance (make up a dance that goes up, down and around), math (count the bugs in the illustrations, measure plants, measure yourself against plants, sort pictures of vegetables by the direction they grow), and science (plant seeds in dirt, grow veggie tops in water, look at seeds with a magnifying glass).
To learn more about how bugs can benefit a garden, check out what this 14 year old has discovered about the 50,000 worms in her community garden in a Wild TV video Wonderful Worms.
To learn more about backyard insects like spiders and centipedes, check out this Wild TV encounter between insects and humans Backyard Bugs.
To learn more about how community gardens offer people a sanctuary from the city’s hustle and bustle in this Wild TV segment A Garden Grows in Brooklyn.
Loading Standards
Background Essay
Print Background Essay
