The Great Fuzz Frenzy

One of my favorite books to use in my classroom every year is The Great Fuzz Frenzy (affiliate link) by Janet Stevens and Susan Stevens Crummel.

When a tennis ball appears in a prairie dog community, there is a frantic frenzy to claim all the fuzz.  When all the prairie dogs are worn out from the frenzy, they fall asleep and Big Bark steals all the fuzz for himself. Then there's a real disaster. An eagle swoops down and captures Big Bark! The community realizes they can't let material objects come between them. They need to stick together and take care of each other.

My favorite thing to work on with this book is visualization. On the page where the eagle swoops down, the page is almost black. I show the kids this page, then I hide the next picture, but I read the words aloud several times. I remind the kids to listen carefully for details, then they draw a picture of what they think this page should look like. We take a little gallery walk to see everyone's picture, then we resume reading. It's very exciting.

This is also a great book to use to work on determining the author's central message.

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I love the vocabulary and word choice the author uses, and I think for older students it would be an awesome mentor text for word choice.

This is one book I would use no matter what grade I was teaching!

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