IF YOU PLAYED HIDE-AND-SEEK WITH A CHAMELEON

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IF YOU PLAYED HIDE-AND-SEEK WITH A CHAMELEON

Name: IF YOU PLAYED HIDE-AND-SEEK WITH A CHAMELEON
Author: Bill Wise
ISBN: 978-1-58469-651-3

by Bill Wise ; illustrated by Rebecca Evans ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 2019

Absolutely fascinating

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Even speedy, strong, flexible, and athletic kids are sure to walk away from this humbled by the talent in the animal kingdom.

Indeed, our animal friends can outsqueeze, outstare, outhide, and outjump us all. Think you’d beat a chameleon at hide-and-seek? Think again. They have camouflage on their side, and they also have eyes that can swivel independently. Giraffes would win at basketball, anacondas at wrestling, kangaroos in the long jump, and elephants in weight lifting. An octopus’s flexibility would give it the advantage playing Twister, and who would even dream of playing tag with a porcupine? Backmatter includes a paragraph of further factual information about each featured animal as well as some easter eggs to spy in the illustrations. A final spread offers some activities to challenge kids in each of the STEM areas; in engineering, children might invent something that would give them the advantage. Teachers will love the idea of having students create new pages for the book with their own animal-human match-ups. Evans’ watercolor illustrations are appropriately humorous, and pointedly, none of the kid contestants are poor sports; all appear to be trying their best and having fun. The five children are racially diverse; one wears glasses; all are slim. Pair with Etta Kaner and David Anderson’s And the Winner Is (2013) for further humbling truths.

Absolutely fascinating . (Informational picture book. 4-8)

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-58469-651-3

Page Count: 32

Publisher: Dawn Publications

Review Posted Online: May 25, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2019

Categories:

CHILDREN'S ANIMALS

- BOOK REVIEW
THE CAKE PROBLEM. EQUIVALENT AND SIMPLIFIED FRACTIONS
by Bill Wise ; illustrated by Davilyn Lynch

- BOOK REVIEW
THE CLOCK PROBLEM
by Bill Wise ; illustrated by Davilyn Lynch

- BOOK REVIEW
THE PIGPEN PROBLEM
by Bill Wise ; illustrated by Davilyn Lynch

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BUTT OR FACE?

From the Butt or Face? series

by Kari Lavelle ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 2023

A gleeful game for budding naturalists.

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Artfully cropped animal portraits challenge viewers to guess which end they’re seeing.

In what will be a crowd-pleasing and inevitably raucous guessing game, a series of close-up stock photos invite children to call out one of the titular alternatives. A page turn reveals answers and basic facts about each creature backed up by more of the latter in a closing map and table. Some of the posers, like the tail of an okapi or the nose on a proboscis monkey, are easy enough to guess—but the moist nose on a star-nosed mole really does look like an anus, and the false “eyes” on the hind ends of a Cuyaba dwarf frog and a Promethea moth caterpillar will fool many. Better yet, Lavelle saves a kicker for the finale with a glimpse of a small parasitical pearlfish peeking out of a sea cucumber’s rear so that the answer is actually face and butt. “Animal identification can be tricky!” she concludes, noting that many of the features here function as defenses against attack: “In the animal world, sometimes your butt will save your face and your face just might save your butt!” (This book was reviewed digitally.)

A gleeful game for budding naturalists. (author’s note) (Informational picture book. 6-8)

Pub Date: July 11, 2023

ISBN: 9781728271170

Page Count: 40

Publisher: Sourcebooks eXplore

Review Posted Online: May 9, 2023

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2023

Categories:

CHILDREN'S ANIMALS | CHILDREN'S SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

- BOOK REVIEW
ODE TO GRAPEFRUIT
by Kari Lavelle ; illustrated by Bryan Collier

- BOOK REVIEW
WE MOVE THE WORLD
by Kari Lavelle ; illustrated by Nabi H. Ali

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DON'T TRUST FISH

by Neil Sharpson ; illustrated by Dan Santat ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 8, 2025

A ribald and uproarious warning to those unschooled in fishy goings-on.

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Sharpson offers so-fish-ticated readers a heads up about the true terror of the seas.

The title says it all. Our unseen narrator is just fine with other animals: mammals. Reptiles. Even birds. But fish? Don’t trust them! First off, the rules always seem to change with fish. Some live in fresh water; some reside in salt water. Some have gills, while others have lungs. You can never see what they’re up to, since they hang out underwater, and they’re always eating those poor, innocent crabs. Soon, the narrator introduces readers to Jeff, a vacant-eyed yellow fish—but don’t be fooled! Jeff’s “the craftiest fish of all.” All fish are, apparently, hellbent on world domination, the narrator warns. “DON’T TRUST FISH!” Finally, at the tail end, we get a sly glimpse of our unreliable narrator. Readers needn’t be ichthyologists to appreciate Sharpson’s meticulous comic timing. (“Ships always sink at sea. They never sink on land. Isn’t that strange?”) His delightful text, filled to the brim with jokes that read aloud brilliantly, pairs perfectly with Santat’s art, which shifts between extreme realism and goofy hilarity. He also fills the book with his own clever gags (such as an image of Gilligan’s Island’s S.S. Minnow going down and a bottle of sauce labeled “Surly Chik’n Srir’racha’r”).

A ribald and uproarious warning to those unschooled in fishy goings-on. (Picture book. 4-7)