I have a fun, colourful, and fascinating new book for you today!
Sloths and Their Moths
Written by Katie Lee Reinert
Illustrated by Gabi Moraes
Tielmour Press, March 2026
40 pages, Fiction
This picture book was a real eye-opener for me. The only things I knew about sloths were they hung from trees, moved very slowly, and have the most adorable faces.
But now I know that a sloth is an actual ecosystem! And…
…they’re covered in moths…
…and they grow fungus for camouflage!
Sloths and Their Moths, which describes the ecosystem of a sloth, is written with a cumulative structure, very reminiscent of The Napping House by Audrey Wood.
It builds upon itself by adding a new element to each page. For example it starts off with:
This is the rain forest,
full of life.
On the next page it adds more information:
This is a Kapok tree
that grows in the forest,
full of life.
It carries on in that fashion, adding more fascinating information about moths, algae, cracks in the sloths’ hair, and more.
I love that style choice, as it’s very repetitive, rhythmic and playful. When you read aloud stories like this, kids just naturally start to join in and read/chant the words with you.
In addition to the wonderful illustrations and text, each page contains callout boxes that give more scientific information and zoomed-in detail of the images.
And at the end of the book there’s a “Seek and Find” game, more fun facts about sloths, and a very handy glossary.
I loved this book and highly recommend it for pre-school to Grade 2. The simple, repetitive text is relatively easy for young readers, and the additional text with the extra info is perfect for advanced readers.
Ideas to extend Sloths and Their Moths:
PRACTICE THE REPEATING TEXT IN A POCKET CHART. I used to do this all the time with my K and first grade students. Choose a repeating sentence from the book, print it on pocket chart cards and display it in your pocket chart. While you read the book to the class, whenever you get to the repeating part, point to the cards and have the kiddos track the print. I suppose you could do this with a doc camera, too. But the benefit of using the cards is that later you can mix them up and the kids read them and put them back in the right order. Such a great activity.
SLOTH CRAFT. This easy and fun activity comes from Our Kid Things. Click on the pic to visit their blog and grab the instructions.
Source: Our Kid Things
SLOTH POEM by Nneka Edwards. Your kids could learn this poem and then make their own using the same pattern. Click on the image to see it read on YouTube.
SLOTH PAPER BAG PUPPET coming soon! I have a Teachers Pay Teachers store and a sloth puppet is next on my list. Be sure to come back for the link.
I hope you enjoy this book as much as I did. Don’t forget to visit my Kid Lit page for links to more book reviews.
Happy Reading!