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Awards & Honors

Wisconsin State Reading Association’s Picture This List

Meet My Family! Animal Babies and Their Families

Written by Laura Purdie Salas
Illustrated by Stephanie Fizer Coleman
Publisher: Millbrook, 2018
ISBN: 978-1512425321 32 pages

Description

Do you ever feel like your family is…weird? Different? Embarrassing? So many kids feel that way, and here’s a book to reassure them that all kinds of families can work just fine. Meet animal babies who are only children or one of a ton. Who are raised by one parent, two parents, or a whole herd of women. Who take care of themselves or have grown-ups who take care of them. Charming rhyming text introduces the family lives of 23 species (including humans), and sidebars give more science info.

My parents both take care of me. [tundra swan cygnet]
I've never met my dad. [raccoon kit]
I'm the only kid around. [foal]
That doesn't sound so bad! [piglet]

Journal Reviews

The sheer splendor of life is subtly woven throughout the text and is also strikingly on display in the final illustration—a lineup of different types of human families.

—School Library Journal

Nontraditional families are represented…this is less a scientific glance at the animal kingdom and more a celebration of all kinds of families.

—Booklist

In a tender celebration of family, more than 20 baby animals describe the ways the adults in their lives care for them.

—Publishers Weekly

Supported by helpful backmatter including a simple map, this will interest animal-fact lovers and primary classroom teachers alike.

—Kirkus Reviews

Reader Reactions

...wait a minute, are we talking about animal babies, or about the kids in our classroom?...Salas does an excellent job of making the animal relationships familiar, without over-anthropomorphising them.

—A Mom's Spare Time

It's a big, wide, and wonderful world of parenting out there, and this nonfiction book, with its ample contrasts of care is a fine source for nature study for young naturalists.

—Books for Kids Blog

I think each of us at one time or another believes that our family is strange / weird / different. We believe that somehow we’re the only ones and that no one else can understand. Laura’s book blows that entire hypothesis out of the water.

—Kimberly Hutmacher Writes

In our world, however, lots of different human families exist and it's great to know that "normal" is just a six-letter word that includes a wide array of combinations. It's also terrific to see different make-ups of families presented by Laura in her latest book...

—Teacher Dance

Videos

Playlist

1 Videos

Meet My Family! Book Trailer

0:59

Downloadable Activities

Classroom Guide

Download

Photo Gallery

Laura - 1970

Laura, Randy, Maddie, Annabelle - 2023

Check out the teaching guide

Laura at the beach - 1971

Laura (5 years old) & family

More for Educators or Writers

Peek at the artist’s process.
Pinterest board for educators
Nonfiction Books and the Creative Process at the Lerner blog
Elementary students’ writing (mask/persona poems from the point of view of young animals) with Margaret Simon at Reflections on the Teche
Friend Friday with Kirby Larson
3 Question Interview with Melissa Stoller at This Writing Life
Swapping Family Traditions with Linda Mitchell at A Word Edgewise
Poetry Tips for Teachers at One Question with Colby Sharp (video)
K students’ writing with Catherine Flynn at Reading to the Core
2nd-grade students’ writing with Susan Apps-Bodilly at Laura’s blog, Writing the World for Kids
Nonfiction Writers Aren’t Robots with Melissa Stewart at Celebrate Science

How this Book Got Started

As a kid, I always felt embarrassed about my family. I had extremely strict parents with very different rules. I also had a big sister who washed her hands hundreds of times a day—a condition now recognized as OCD, but back then, it was not a diagnosis. You were just “crazy.” So at the heart of this book was my question about how to make kids less embarrassed about their own seemingly weird families. I brainstormed lots of approaches to that question, but once I merged that with my fascination with animals, I realized that using animal family structures could be perfect! Almost every human family structure you can think of has a wild animal counterpart.