Listen to the Desert/Oye al desierto In the classroom: Listen to the Desert / Oye al desierto is most appropriate for students in kindergarten through first grades. It integrates with classroom curriculum in the areas of science (deserts and animals), language arts (reading and writing onomatopoeia elements ), English as a Second Language (reading and writing onomatopoeia elements), and social studies (Southwest deserts). The theme is discovering of the sounds of animals and nature sounds that may be heard in a desert in the Southwest. I shared this book with a bilingual kindergarten class who will engage in a year-long focus on communication in Spanish and English and who were about to begin a study of the Southwest desert. This was a collaborative plan between the classroom teacher, Ms. Carmen Alver, and myself. Before reading: Students examined the illustrations in the book. After reading: Students worked in groups of six children in which they examined the facts of the sounds which the animals make. Students worked individually to reproduce their favorite illustration in the book. These were our prompts: What did the book make you think about? What did you learn from the story or the illustrations? How did the book make you feel? Are all the illustrations factual? (Example: a snake playing the maracas or the iguana that shielded itself with the cactus.) About the Book | Book Review | Children's Voices | Interview | Lesson Plan | About the Reviewer