HORNED TOAD HAS A SUPERPOWER

A horned toad—“I’m actually a lizard”—struts its stuff for a set of burrowing owl nestlings in the harsh Texas desert.

The round-eyed owlets make an appreciative, chatty audience as the horned toad shows off its pointy horns, flicks up ants to eat with its quick tongue, and digs into the dust or fades into a “blend-y spot” when snakes, hawks, or other predators happen by. Impressive…but super? As it turns out, the horned toad can do something else in response to danger—something that will have audiences of young readers joining the owls in chorusing “DO IT AGAIN! DO IT AGAIN!” That would be shooting blood from its eyes, which Shea depicts with cartoony melodrama in a rousingly gory climactic scene. The horned toad doesn’t do it again, noting that “reloading takes time.” But Esbaum keeps the stream of facts going, both with a closing set of true/false questions about the spiny squirter’s characteristics, behavior, and endangered status in Texas, where it is the state reptile, and some background tidbits about burrowing owls, whose ability to scare attackers away from the mouth of their underground nest by rattling like the local viper counts as a “superpower,” too.

Splashy facts and fun in sand and saguaro country.