A family of raccoons go on their nightly food foraging in Nancy Shaw’s Raccoon Tune, a poetic picture book illustrated by Howard Fine. A MichiganReads! book pick for 2008, this book is easy to read again and again. The raccoons seem to dance in front of headlights, tango with the trash and galavant with fish.
Find extension activities at http://www.michigan.gov/mde/0,1607,7-140-54574_26038_54002—,00.html and http://www.first-school.ws/theme/animals/wild/raccoon.htm .
This is a great book to act out. Set up one student as a narrator, and four students as the raccoons who perform the raccoon actions.
For the musical based on Raccoon Tune by Joshua Penman, check out his website at http://www.joshuapenman.com/wp/?page_id=5. Find the orchestra audio and listen to his entertaining expression of the book.