John Canty

In a cute guessing game style, children are shown the tail of an animal and given a few facts about it (e.g., is tall, or carries a baby in its pouch, or hops and swims). They are then invited to guess which animal it is before turning the page to reveal the animal's head and see if they are correct (e.g., giraffe, or kangaroo, or frog).

I love the concept of this book and the illustrations are lovely too. I bet it would work great in an elementary classroom setting in particular. For younger show more kids, they get easily distracted by the head shown on the left page and keep saying what animal that is instead of focusing on the right page where the new clues are being given. So my small quibble with this book is that it would be better if there was a more clear delineation, perhaps giving the revealed answer a full page spread with the animal's name on one side and their image on the other before starting a new page spread with the clues on one side and the animal's tail on the other. show less

Can't quite round up to four stars because it doesn't satisfy or make me want to read others in the series. What kind of whale (humpback is implied)? Why are you calling a sea star a starfish (don't pass on old info.)? Where's the back matter? That said, some families might like this, esp. the artsy-fartsy ones.

From Cockburn Libraries (Australia): "You can only see my tail. What insect am I? Follow the clues to discover which beautiful insect awaits you on the next page!"