Everglades by Jean Craighead George illustrated by Wendell Minor

A man rows a group of children out into the Florida Everglades.  He tells the story of its formation and how man, over time,  has destroyed some of its creatures, plants and other life forms.  He charges the children with the duty of restoring the life in the Everglades.
Beautiful language and illustrations.
I especially liked how Ms. George used a variety of words for the adjective "many"- -"clouds of-", "blizzard of-", "profusion of-", "myriad of-" etc.
Mentor text for word choice and using the thesaurus.
I read this book because it was recommended in Emily Kissner's book Summarizing, Paraphrasing and Retelling. She utilizes its different text structures to model with students how to identify text structures.  This book combines the following text structures: chronological, description and cause/effect.
Strategies: cause/effect, word choice, text structures