"Inch by Inch" by Leo Lionni

This is a Caldecott Honor book and it is the story of an inchworm. The inchworm is useful to all the requests of the animals to measure their tails or legs until he gets to the bird who wants him to measure his song. Obviously an inchworm cannot measure the length of a song so he starts thinking. Finally he has an idea of how to measure the song so he starts inching away when the bird starts singing until he inches out of sight. I think this book is good because it teaches its readers about measurement. As a teacher I could use this book when introducing units of measurement to my students. After reading this book my students could do an activity where they measure various objects in the classroom. I could give them several items that cannot be measured also (for example the sound of a horn honking) and have them identify ways that we could measure those things (for a horn we could use a pitch reader to measure its sound). In a classroom I volunteered in last year the teacher had a bulletin board about measurement and I noticed that the title of the board was "Inch by Inch". I hadn't realized until now that it may have been making reference to this book. The bulletin board had many units of measurement along with several objects and their corresponding lengths. I liked the idea of a measurement bulletin board for introducing the topic to students. I think this book could be used very effectively in the classroom in this way.