SCALES AND TAILS

In this nonfiction board book, animal facts are paired with touchable images.

From the creepy crawly to the slimy, each animal gets its own double-page spread complete with an up-close, detailed stock photograph. A touch-and-feel element is built into each animal’s image so that readers have a chance to interact with the fuzz on a tarantula and the velvety skin of a bat’s wing, for example. These touchable elements are largely successful. The actual stickiness of the frog’s tongue will impress little readers, and the subtle scales on the chameleon are well-integrated with the image. Others are less successful, however. The skunk’s tail is a swoop of plain white fuzz, and the tarantula’s “hairs,” while fun to touch, obscure the details underneath. The green-skinned PBS Kids characters accompany the animal images. The text itself is just the facts, rare for a board book. It introduces some great vocabulary, like predator and musk, but misses the opportunity to use the word nocturnal in both the bat and skunk entries. The book also assumes some prerequisite knowledge: Mammal is not explained, for example. This, coupled with the level of information shared, makes it an odd match for the board-book format.

The tactile elements and factoids will make it high appeal for curious readers, who will overlook its imperfections.