What do you do with a tail like this?

[this post written for Saffron Tree]

What Do You Do With A Tail Like This?
(A 2004 Caldecott Honor Book)
by Steve Jenkins and Robin Page

Recommended ages: 4-7 years, read-alone
Suggested ages: 1-4 years, read together

Animals use their noses, ears, tails, eyes, mouths, and feet in very different ways. See if you can guess which animal each part belongs to and how it is used.

Thus starts this hands-on, clever, informative book of curious and rare facts about animals.

The book is beautifully illustrated using cut-paper art, presented as an interactive guessing game, with simple text that even wee little ones can follow along.

A set of animals are displayed in each double-page spread - well, mostly their body part relevant to the accompanying text is displayed first to encourage the little minds to guess. For instance, the first two-page spread shows zoomed in views of the noses of alligator, platypus, mole, elephant, hyena - with a simple question "What do you do with a nose like this?"

Part of the fun initially is to identify the various noses as belonging to the corresponding animals. The following page shows the animals in full form, with a brief sentence highlighting what each animal does with its nose.

If you are a platypus, you use your nose to dig in the mud shows an accompanying picture of a platypus sticking its nose in the mud.

Similarly, If you are an elephant, you can give yourself a bath with your nose shows an elephant splashing itself with a trunk full of water.

The answers describe how each animal uses that particular body part (be it nose, or ears, or tail, or eyes, or mouth, or feet) in a slightly differently way.

And so we embark on an interesting study of animals where we discover that some animals use their noses for digging, some use their ears for seeing, some use their feet to walk on water, some use their tails to sting, and some even squirt blood from their eyes.

For older readers, there is additional information on each animal at the back of the book.

Fascinating facts about amazing animals, presented with wonderful visuals through rich cut-paper illustrations in a child-friendly way seems to be the hallmark of author/illustrator Steve Jenkins books. He has published many successful nonfiction books about animals for children like Move, Biggest Strongest Fastest, Animals In Flight, Slap Squeak and Scatter: How Animals Communicate.

And, sure enough, What Do You Do With A Tail Like This? has become one of Ana's favorite books over the last week or so since we brought it home from the library.

Her favorite animal in the book happens to be "sticky feet gecko" apparently because it can walk on the ceiling - and walking on the ceiling happens to be Ana's new favorite thing to do, thanks to her dad holding her up, upside down, so she can pretend to walk on the ceiling - a trend that started with Dr.Seuss' ABC book:Camel on the ceiling C...c...C... :)