WHOSE HOME IS IT?

A snail searches for a proper place to spend the night.

In language a cut or two above the elemental tenor of the plotline, the small searcher—dubbed “our hero” or “our little hero”—first approaches a burrow inhabited by a badger who “doesn’t want to share his abode.” He moves on to a nest full of thrush eggs, an anthill that is plainly too crowded, a cave where bats “scream and listen to their echoes,” and several other unsuitable residences…before finally realizing that he’s been carrying a cozy personal “conch” all along. In the woodsy illustrations, multiple flaps cut into the sturdy, rounded-corner pages on every spread lift to reveal other animals in related sorts of holes, nests, and other natural homes. The co-published Whose Track Is It?features similar flaps that lift to reveal creatures including a goat with “skillful” legs, a toad who “walks very carefully and thoughtfully,” and “ungulates” with even-toed (cow) and odd-toed (horse) hooves. They have all left distinctive footprints for a lost roe deer fawn to follow. Nappie-clad naturalists may not have the easiest time with these, but their slightly older sibs will find the content as rewarding as it is challenging. Saldaña renders the animals and settings with appealing simplicity, and Janská’s leading questions add further incentive to pore over them.

Familiar premises make the natural history in this Czech import and its companion all the more digestible.