What Do You Do With A Book Like This

Title: What Do You Do With A Book Like This

Author: Steve Jenkins, Robin Page

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Books for Children

Date: 2002

Number of pages: 32 page

Reading level: Ages 4-8

Genre: Children's Nonfiction

Summary: This, simply put, is a book about tails, animal tails. I also covers ears, noses, feet and a number of other parts of the anatome of animals. The illustrations are detailed, beautiful and very, very eye catching. The text is a wealth of information, simply stated, that is very informative. The child that reads this one with an adult cannot help but learn more and more about the wonderful natural world around them. The riveting part is how there are so many animals that each have unusual stories revealed through fun and different and interesting body parts. This is not a "first animals" book at all. Rather it gains its fascination by showing how animals make so many different uses of their body parts, uses that go against what you first think.

My reaction: This book is breathtaking, a real stand-out visually -- and at the same time grippingly educational and fun for kids. If you want to see that dawning light of curiousity and hunger for understanding in a child that's just learning that it's fun to learn, there's no better book than this one.

Potential problems: I didn't see any problems with this story and informational children's book.

My recommendation: This description is obviously way more advanced than the book itself -- but children love to hear more of the story about characters or animals from the adult reading to them, and this book gives you (the adult) the back story for every one of them. I think that it is a good book to have in all preschools and daycares so that children can ask academic questions in regards to the animals and their parts