Overview

Salmonid Savers teaches students about California science content standards such as habitat, adaptations, and resource use, while also giving them an insight into the history and cultural importance of California’s incredible salmon and steelhead. With cartoons, mazes, games, stories, and activities, this booklet is sure to reel in audiences of all ages.

Written and designed in-house by SYRCL staffers Kathy Dotson, director of SYRCL’s RiverPeople program, and Carlyle Holmes, director of SYRCL’s education program, this booklet is SYRCL’s first kids’ booklet publication. A team of local school children helped with the development of the booklet, providing comments and suggestions as the project unfolded. “This book has taught me so much about salmon—and the games are cool too,” said Kelsey Brennan a 6th grader from Seven Hills School in Nevada City, who was part of the children’s design team

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To Order Copies

Copies of Salmonid Savers are free while supplies last, thanks to funding from NOAA Fisheries. Shipping and Handling is $5 for a class set of 30. To order copies, please send an email to carlyle@syrcl.org or call (530)265-5961 x204.

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Testimonials

Dear SYRCL,

Recently my class spent two weeks studying your booklet, Salmonid Savers. The children loved this booklet. They were so engaged in learning from the booklet, and they have held on to the information they gleaned from it so well. Salmonid Savers was absolutely appropriate for their grade level, interest, and skills. They were so excited about it that they decided to write you a group letter themselves. I could hardly get them to stop talking about the booklet! Thank you for all your hard work and expertise.

Merry Byles-Daly
3-4th grade teacher at
Grass Valley Charter School

Dear SYRCL,

We are the students in the Fourth Grade Class at Grass Valley Charter School. We just read your booklet, Salmonid Savers, and we really enjoyed it. We think the book has a lot of information and it is explained really well. It goes step by step with you and it tells you a lot, and it helps you remember facts that are tough to remember.

You can learn from this book and have fun at the same time. We like the way that first you have challenging and interesting information that is hard to learn, and then there is a game so that you can have fun. We also think that it tells you facts in kids’ words and explains things really well. We learned so many cool facts from your book, such as how, from a nest of 3,000 salmon eggs, only two salmon will survive to lay eggs of their own; that salmon can jump eleven feet high and go up waterfalls; and that they can smell their homes from hundreds of miles away.

We like how you drew the characters. The pictures catch your eyes and they are funny. When you get tired of reading, the characters in the pictures help you figure out the words. We like your backgrounds of the waterfalls, trees, mountains, and rivers. The pictures look animated like cartoons or pictures in comic books.

We really love the games. We think it’s neat that you put the answers to the games on the back page. We like the “Race to the Redd” game because it is like a real board game. We like the maze because it’s challenging and there are lots of twists and turns. We like the “Fortunate and Unfortunate” game because you can make up your own “fortunate and unfortunate” stories and because the pictures are really neat. We like the “Go with the Flow” game because the bugs are like I Spy books and because it tells you what the salmon need to live.

We are studying rivers this year, and from your book we learned that salmon help rivers by cleaning rocks and providing food for lots of fish, birds, and animals. We went on a rafting trip and saw the salmon after we read your book. We also took a trip to the American River to watch the salmon going upriver there. It was really exciting to see the salmon because we knew a lot about them. Now we are painting beautiful salmon in art and we have salmon characters in our class play about the river. We are teaching other kids about salmon, and we are trying to be Salmonid Saver Kids! We think it is amazing that this is the very first book you ever wrote. We hope you will write another book soon. Please send us a copy if you do!

Your friends,
The Grass Valley Charter School
Salmonid Saver Kids

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