The Best Books About the Rainforest to Share with Your Class
Have you ever thought about how different a rainforest is from where you live? Rainforests are, as the name suggests, full of rain! But they’re also full of different creatures that you rarely see anywhere else, and more trees than almost any other place in the world. Did you know that because of the number of trees in the rainforest, it can take ten minutes for a single raindrop to reach the ground? The amount of trees in the rainforest also means that less than two percent of sunlight reaches the bottom layers of the rainforest. Crazy, right?
Have you and your students been looking at rainforests? Have you been looking for books about the rainforest? You can find so many books about the rainforest that it’s difficult to know where to begin! Here are a few of our favorites to help you get started!
* Each book title links to Amazon just to make it easy – you can read reviews, a summary, and order should you choose! (This post contains affiliate links.)
Shine- A- Light Book
A really fun place to start when looking for books about the rainforest is Secrets of the Rainforest by Carron Brown. This book is super fun because if you hold it up to the light, or put a light behind the pages, you’ll get to see hidden habitats and secrets! This makes it a really fun book to read, whether you’re in the classroom, at home, or inside a nice, dark, blanket fort. But even without the flashlight, this book is a real gem! This book really focuses on the animals you might see in the rainforest, from the jaguar to the parrots to the butterflies. If you’re interested in a fun book about the rainforest for your kiddo, be sure to check it out!
Books About the Rainforest
In Going to the Rainforest by Damian Goodall, you’ll find pages of real-life photos of the rainforest. Each picture shows an image from a real rainforest and each page is overlaid with information about the subject of the picture. The author really focuses on showing us how all of the different animals can survive in such a vast and fertile environment. If you’re looking for books about the rainforest that show what the rainforest is actually like, this is one that you don’t want to miss!
The Kapok Tree in Books About the Rainforest
In the first book on this list, we mentioned the Kapok Tree in the Amazon Rainforest. The Great Kapok Tree: A Tale of the Amazon Rain Forest by Lynne Cherry is a book fully devoted to the Kapok Tree. A specific Kapok Tree. Lynne Cherry traveled deep into the rainforest to be able to write and illustrate this book. She writes about a man who tries and tries to chop down the Great Kapok Tree. He exhausts himself and he sleeps. While he sleeps, creatures around him whisper in his ear about how important trees are, and how everything in the rainforest works together to create a habitat for the animals that live there. This book is beautifully illustrative, highly informative, and also very entertaining! That’s why it’s made it into our favorite books about the rainforest. Take a look!
What if YOU Ran the Rainforest?
If I Ran the Rainforest: All About Tropical Rainforests, written by Bonnie Worth, is part of the Dr. Seuss Learning Library. In this book, you’ll journey with the Cat in the Hat, Sally, and Dick through the different layers of a rainforest. You’ll see lots of plants, animals, and the people that live there, too. Books about the rainforest don’t always tell you that there are different kinds of rainforests, but this book does! It explains the different types and what you might find in each one. In the back of the book, you’ll find a glossary, explaining what some of the more difficult words mean.
Fictional Books About the Rainforest
According to the book, Sloths Don’t Run, written by Tori McGee, sloths do not run. This fictional tale tells the story of a sloth named Hank and a moth named Dee. These two friends set off to do something incredibly difficult for them: they want to run in the great rainforest race. Told in delightful rhymes, this story is full of inspiration. The friends work together and learn to have courage, and when they work hard, anything is possible. Don’t miss out on one of the best books about the rainforest for your students!
Activities About the Rainforest for Your Classroom
If your students love the rainforest, be sure to check out these rainforest coloring pages! You’ll find many options that focus on helping your students learn! There are color-by-numbers, color-by-letters, and even color-by-sight words! These coloring pages are great for keeping your students entertained while helping them learn! These packages contain 28-46 pages, depending on which one you select. But the best part of all? Your students can use what they’ve been learning from the books about the rainforest to help them color these pages!
Are you still looking for more ideas? Check out the FREE Reading Graphic Organizer today! This tool helps students identify the main idea, story elements, and beginning, middle, and end of stories. It can be used with any story you want to introduce in your classroom, and best of all, it’s FREE!
