Where Do They Go?: Over and Under the Snow by Kate Messner

OVER THE SNOW I GLIDE.

INTO THE WOODS.

As a boy and his dad ski into the winter woods, the boy's eye catches a flash of color as a red squirrel suddenly zips from sight.

"WHERE DID HE GO?"

"UNDER THE SNOW," DAD SAYS.

Dad tells the boy that many animals keep food stores under the snow, like the red squirrel, who can forage for the scent of nuts and berries he has stored in the space between the slightly melted snow and the cold ground below. And he's not the only creature to make use of that cold locker. Rabbits and hares also visit their secret safe under the snow-- and voles, deer mice, shrews, and ground squirrels have their own larders of nuts and fruit with rinds. Some sleep most of the time in semi-hibernation. They snooze in underground nests and tunnels, where they can wake to eat from time to time from their goodies or sleep long days to conserve their internal fat stores.

As the boy glides up the hills and down, he also sees the wakeful predators, watching for any sign of an animal above the snow. Foxes and owls pounce powerfully if their sharp ears detect a sound from below the snow.

Dad shows him where the sharp hooves of deer leave their tracks behind in the snow.

UNDER THE SNOW THE FAT BULLFROGS SLEEP, DREAMING OF WHEN THEY HAD TAILS.

And down below the snow, beavers in their dens dine on carefully selected supplies of pinecones and bark in their warm dining rooms with a view of the water.

In what seems like a cold and deserted landscape as father and son ski through, forest animals are living in places hidden and unseen, finding food in the frozen stillness of winter, in Kate Messner's Over and Under the Snow.

There is much to learn from the careful ways of animals in winter in this primary lesson on animal behavior and survival in Messner's pleasantly plotted book. Artist Christopher Silas Neal's craftily rendered illustrations display the double levels of life in the winter woodlands, useful for meeting the requirements of the animal science curriculum for the primary grades.

"Beautifully rendered," writes Horn Book Magazine in a starred review.

Strange Bedfellows? How to Clean A Hippopotamus: A Look at Unusual Animal Partnerships by Steve Jenkins

Why does a plover stroll into a crocodile's mouth?

And why would coyotes and badgers hang out together?

Why does the boxer crab make like a cheerleader, waving anemones in its claws like pom-poms?

Why does a warthog drop and roll over when he meets a mongoose?

All of these strange pairs are engaged in symbiotic partnerships, patterns developed in nature when two very unlike species engage in seemingly uncharacteristic behaviors for mutual benefit.

Crocodiles will munch anything that walks, swims, or flies that they can get their teeth into...except the little plover, called the toothpick bird. Crocodiles lie down and open wide for this daring little bird which walks right into that snaggly smile zone to chow down on tidbits stuck in the croc's teeth. Voila'! Dental hygiene done right!

The little boxer crab picks small anemones and waves them in the face of predators, who love crab nuggets but hate being stung by anemones, and the anemones enjoy the floating fragments of food that the crabs drop.  And warthogs, troubled by ticks, lie down and let a team of mongoose pick off  those pesky parasites, their favorite party tidbits. Oxpicker birds do the same for giraffes and rhinos.

Nature has many odd couples of unlike animals which find each other's company has survival value. Egrets, whose diet is big on grasshoppers, ride around on the backs of antelopes, picking off the bugs that their four-footed transports stir up, meanwhile using their elevated positions to peer around for predators, sounding the alarm when big cats come prowling.

Coyotes and badgers actually play tag team when they're just dying to dine on prairie dog. The badger digs down and stand guard in the backdoor of the burrow while the coyote chases the colony in by the front door, and soon the panicked prairie dogs are easy pickings on both ends.  A small bird called the honeyguide follows a loaded bee to its hive, flies back to summons the honey badger and lead him to the nest, and when the badger uses his strong claws to break open the hive, they both feast together on the sweet treat within.

Steve Jenkins' and Robin Page's just-published  How to Clean a Hippopotamus: A Look at Unusual Animal Partnerships (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013) uses Jenkins' illustrative skill to picture these amazing animal partners.  The book's page design utilizes panels to demonstrate how these partnerships work to mutual advantage, ending with that mutually symbiotic relationship most familiar to children, that of human and dog.  An appendix explains the types of symbiosis and  summarizes the basic facts--size, habitat, and diet--of  the fifty-four featured animals, from ants to giraffes, clownfish to wolves.  A mutual partnership themselves, as a couple Jenkins and Page are among the most successful of nature writers for young people, engaging them with enticing mysteries and award-winning artistry, as shown in earlier books such as What Do You Do When Something Wants To Eat You?,  Jenkins' splendidly illustrated The Beetle Book, (see review here), and their My First Day (see my recent review here).

School Library Journal passes out more than a pair of kudos to Jenkins' and Page's latest mutual effort: "This title is another outstanding offering from this extraordinarily talented, wonderfully symbiotic couple."