FANCY FEET

Rhymed clues challenge young readers to identify the owners of 12 sets of feet.

The guessing game isn’t a hard one, at least until the closer. The answer to each riddle, revealed with a page turn, not only completes a rhyme, but actually can be spotted immediately—in part, at least—in Han’s artfully composed nature scene. Hirsch provides enrichment by slipping nature facts into her verses, which she goes on to explain at greater length in a closing summation. The creature perched on a flower “testing out the food supply,” for instance, turns out to be a butterfly, who is literally tasting the petals with her feet before laying eggs, and thanks to versatile appendages that can “walk flat—or knuckle under,” chimpanzees are at home whether on the ground or climbing a “vine trapeze.” The author and illustrator throw a curveball at the end by suddenly switching away from the animal kingdom for a final set of “feet” that land “in a cold, red place” but “were built for just this spot.” The stated answer is the “Mars Robot” with hooked wheels. Readers might find it hard to pull any useful details about these Martian feet from the accompanying blurry image of a very small vehicle in a rugged landscape; still, they will come away with new information about a variety of earthly ones. Children and other human figures in the illustrations are racially diverse.

An easy nature walk.