ARE YOU STRONGER THAN AN ANT?

Younger readers are invited to appreciate the special abilities of a variety of wild animals.

Morgan presents a series of rhetorical questions (“Could you eat your food while your head is upside down?” or “Could you eat 3,000 treats in one single night?” or “Could you drink 20 gallons of water in under 20 minutes?”), then uses the answers as jumping-off points for sharing information about animals including flamingoes, bats, and camels. While much of the information is interesting and age-appropriate, such as how bats use echolocation and ants are able to carry burdens many times their own weight, some facts are poorly chosen or even potentially dangerous. The stones in Roose’s accompanying illustration are unrealistically hefty, but the awkwardly phrased “Could you…gulp down rocks without them being chewed?” (as several crocodilians do) could well prompt reckless readers to try lithophagy. “Penguins are flightless birds,” Morgan observes on another page, “which means they can’t fly.” Elsewhere, rather than offer possible reasons why sloths descend to ground level to defecate, she airily takes them to task for not staying safely up in the trees, and anthropomorphically suggests that mosquitoes “enjoy” the smell of stinky feet. The uneven text is presented alongside illustrations of animals and children with a variety of skin tones sharing outdoorsy scenes.

Promising in concept, careless in execution.