Take a jaunt through the animal kingdom to identify the noses, ears, tails, eyes, mouths, and feet of a variety of creatures, thirty in all. On the first of each pair of double page spreads is a question, such as, "What do you do with a nose like this?" which accompanies illustrations of the noses of a platypus, hyena, elephant, mole, and alligator. First, you try to identify each of the animals. Then you turn the page to view a complete illustration of each corresponding animal, along with a one-sentence description of how it uses its nose: "If you're a platypus, you use your nose to dig in the mud."

Children will pore over each of Jenkins' large, appealing, detailed cut and torn paper collage animals, which won him a Caldecott Honor for this book, and identify the family of each. The fascinating panoply of animals, both familiar and exotic, includes: insects (water strider, field cricket), fish (archerfish, four-eyed fish), reptiles and amphibians (five-lined skink, egg-eating snake), birds (blue-footed booby, brown pelican), and mammals (giant anteater, star-nosed mole). Readers will revel in all the cool animals, and can act out each animal's use of senses and body parts. At the back of the book is an additional paragraph and thumbnail picture of each of the thirty animals covered, which should send the curious on a mission to locate more information about the animals they find most alluring and to locate more nonfiction picture books by the inimitable Steve Jenkins.


THEMES: ANIMALS. CREATIVE DRAMA. SCIENCE & SCIENTISTS.