Awards

The Pennsylvania Center for the Book celebrates outstanding books, authors, and literary achievement through four signature awards: The Baker’s Dozen: Thirteen Best Books for Family Literacy, The Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award, The Lynd Ward Graphic Novel Prize, and Pennsylvania Great Reads from Great Places. Together, these programs recognize excellence in family literacy, children’s poetry, graphic novels, and books that reflect Pennsylvania’s rich literary heritage. By honoring exceptional literary works and connecting readers with engaging and meaningful stories, the Pennsylvania Center for the Book promotes lifelong reading, literacy, and a love of literature across the Commonwealth and beyond.

Search Awards

Different? Same!

By Heather Tekavec
Illustrated by Pippa Curnick
Published by Kids Can Press, 2017
Young Readers

This book does an excellent job of highlighting the unique characteristics of various animals. In addition, by prompting readers to “look closer now,” this book also reveals similarities among the animals. An ant, grasshopper, lobster, and butterfly have differences that are easy to see…but what a wonder to discover that they all have antennae! The back of the book provides a deeper examination of the similarities and differences among the featured animals. The author also includes helpful descriptions of animal characteristics, such as whiskers, fangs, and tentacles, and why they are useful to animals. The reader will love their role as researcher and investigator as they enjoy this book. Even though it is the same story, each read will uncover something new and different.

Different, Same cover

Pennsylvania Center for the Book Awards

Baker's Dozen 2018 Winner

Book Activities & Discussion Ideas

Tips for Using with Children

Animals come in all shapes and sizes, and have unique traits and characteristics that help them survive. This book provides a wonderful introduction to animal facts, as well as similarities and differences among them. After reading the story, encourage children to sort animal figures/photos into various groups. The last page of the book (before the descriptions of characteristics) provides several examples of ways to group animals. What other groupings can children identify? What other animals could be included?

Tips for Using with Families

Adults can prepare to share this story with children by reading through the book ahead of time. Adults can look at the names of the different animals to see if they are familiar with each of them. In the back of the book, there is a special section titled “Why Animals Have the Characteristics They Do.” By reading this section ahead of time, adults can learn interesting facts about the animals and add them to the story as they are reading. For example, when reading about the animals that have tusks, adults can add that tusks aren’t always used for fighting. (Walruses use their tusks to pull themselves up onto ice!) These facts can help adults feel prepared to answer questions that young readers might have, and they are great conversation prompts as well!