Country Profiles

The Country Profiles series delivers places from around the world into the hands of the reader using vibrant photos and fascinating facts. Each book delves into a different country and discusses various aspects of the country including: location, landscape and climate, wildlife, people, customs, school and work, food, celebrations, and more. Each title provides an immersive experience for the reader through a short introduction to words and phrases in each country’s language, instructions for a traditional craft, and a cultural recipe. The series includes unique, fun facts such as: In the book Norway, it explains how some Norwegians search for wild cloudberries in the summer. If the family finds a patch, they keep it a secret so that they can pick the berries the next year. South Korea discusses that their ice pops come in many flavors, including the Jaws ice pop. It is in the shape of a shark, is gray and purple on the outside, and pink on the inside. Each book includes an informative timeline that offers key dates in each country’s history. The factual pages at the end of the book aid in recapping each country’s information. A glossary, index, and more sources are included so that readers can access more information and understand key terms about the books. This series is excellent for early to middle grade readers to engage them in learning about the countries in the world and make great books for research.

Each informational text in the Country Profiles series presents an overview of the geography, cultural heritage, and colonial history of a country. These short, fourth-grade level readers, were published in 2021 and thus offer a culturally relevant text set for school and classroom libraries. Each text is organized using the same short chapter titles like “location,” “landscape and climate,” and “communities,” which would help educators facilitate independent and group research assignments or guided reading notes. The factual information of each chapter is enhanced through colorful photographs, tables, and figures, and texts are written in engaging and student-friendly language. This text set would offer students a credible and readable informational source for independent reading in the social studies subject areas.

In this series, the reader learns about a variety of countries and special characteristics of each country. For example, each book discusses the customs, traditions, food, landscape, climate, celebrations, and the people of each country. The beautiful photographs of each book capture the
readers’ attention and support the informational text within the book. These non-fiction books include numerous non-fiction text features to support the reader in understanding the important facts in the book. Some non-fiction text features included in each book are engaging photographs, maps, a table of contents, labels, headings, bold-faced words, a chart, a diagram, a timeline, a glossary, and an index. For fellow educators, these books are a dream for teaching non-fiction text features and utilizing them for student research projects. The books are all set up in the same format, which allows for whole group discussions on the text features and information within the text. The books share similar information in the same order, thus allowing for great discussions for students to share about their ‘country’ and compare countries to one
another. Readers, pack your bags for an epic adventure of discovering all of these fascinating countries!