I blogged about the book last year after getting my feet wet in close reading techniques. It's perfect because each animal's passage is just one page... well the poems in Vulture Verses are the same!! Each page focuses on just one animal that people don't really care for too much.
These two books will address Reading Anchor Standard 9 perfectly! It says:
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.CCRA.R.9 Analyze how two or more texts address similar themes or topics in order to build knowledge or to compare the approaches the authors take.
We are doing this lesson this week in my reading small groups! I will give my students a photo copy of a page from each book on the same animal so they can write on it (remember, you can copy pages that are for classroom use!!) and they will use this activity sheet (which you can grab for free):
Here are the animals that are in both books:
bat (there are two kinds in the poems)
I may give them a copied page from Animals Nobody Loves at the end of the week to let them write a poem about an animal not already in Vulture Verses. They would love that! :o)
You can get more lessons like this here:
Have a great week!