This clever and amusing book divides every page into three independently flippable segments. When the pages are aligned properly, they depict one of ten recognizable animals--platypus, baboon, alligator, weevil, opossum, caterpillar, crab, rhinoceros, trunkfish, and ruby-topaz hummingbird--while a brief text explains their salient features. Flip a couple of segments, and there is no longer a baboon, but a bunkfil: the head of a baboon, the body of a trunkfish, and the rear of a weevil, with the name of every combination also spread out across the three segments, as is the text. The description of the new combination is almost nonsensical, but the delivery is deadpan: ``Second cousins to humans and sharing many similar habits, they exude a poisonous slime that repels any would-be predator. Encased in armor, they're found embedded by the nose, legs waving helplessly in the air.'' Amid all the confusion is some sound zoological information, cunningly presented. Meeuwissen has drawn the animals in a jaunty palette of inviting chrome-bright colors, and the book's stout construction will withstand flip after flip. (Picture book. 4-9)
