What Do We Do? We All Play by Julie Flett

Play is almost universal among us. Birds dive and dip and seem to play chase until it's time to rest in their nest, and we mammals love to play, especially the young ones. Kids run and race and roll in the tall grass. They swim and dive deep... until they are ready to sleep.

Going from wild chases to sudden naps, wherever they live....

COYOTES YIP AND YAWN.

BIRDS PEEP AND PECK.

BUNNIES HIDE AND HOP.

Under the chill waters of the northern ocean, whales swim and squirt. And out on the grasslands, the buffaloes rumble and roll. Kids slip and slide in the slippery snow.

AND WE ALL SLEEP!

In the latest book of award-winning author-illustrator, Julie Flett, We All Play (Greystone Books, 2021), the joys of being alive in this world are celebrated--in elegant English and in a Cree Indian language glossary that supports the narrative. And to the joy of parents, this book brings them all together in a universal bedtime story as well.

Julie Flett is also the celebrated author of Birdsong (See my review here).

Kirkus Reviews writes, “Everyone loves to play! Award-winning author/illustrator Flett shares the joyful antics of young animals as they romp in much the same way as human children…This celebration of nature is sprinkled with words from the Cree language… [and] celebrate[s] our interconnection with the creatures who share our world.”

Australia's Native Dog! Dingo (Australian Animals) by Grace Hansen

Every kid knows a pet dog when he or she sees one, whether it's a Chihuahua or a Great Dane or a mixed-breed mutt!

But dogs have not always been tame pets, and despite the millions of domesticated dogs all over the globe, they haven't always been friendly helpers and pets for humans. There are other wild dogs all over the world, too, who can reveal a lot about the story of dogs.

In North America there are "wild dogs" also--foxes, coyotes, and wolves--who look a lot like dogs, but are wild, not pets. And on the big continent of Austraila, there are wild dogs, too. They are called dingoes.

DINGOES CAN SURVIVE IN DIFFERENT HABITATS--FROM TROPIC TO DESERT TO ALPINE AREAS.

Dingoes are medium-sized and usually tan or reddish brown, with fluffy tails and upright pointy ears, like foxes. Like many canines, they have white markings on feet, legs, and bellies. Like coyotes and wolves, they can live alone or with a pack who move around together. Like their wild American cousins, they hunt small or medium-sized animals and will also eat plants and fruits when they can get them.

THESE WILD DOGS ARE SMALL AND LEAN--NO MORE THAN FOUR FEET LONG AND 33 POUNDS.

Like their North American wild cousins, dingoes are born in litters of up to ten pups and stay with their mother and her pack until they grow up and learn to find food on their own. Again, like their cousins, the fox, coyote, and wolf, they are versatile hunters capable of surviving in most climates. And if the pack gets too big and there is too much competition for food, some of them may go off and begin their own new pack.

Dingoes are fascinating creatures, easy to mistake for the average dog, but definitely wild and wily, capable of living in a wide range of habitats, in Grace Hansen's Dingo (Australian Animals (Ak)) (Abdo Kids Books,2020). One of the publisher's series on Australian Animals, this non-fiction book for primary graders offers up-close and personal color photographs of this wild dog of Australia, easy-to-read but information-packed pages, backed up by appended sections--More Facts, Glossary, and Index in a well-conceived introduction to non-fiction books for the lower grades, perfect for those first science reports.

For fiction fans, pair this one with Mary Pope Osborne's time-traveling but fact-filled Australian outback adventure, Dingoes at Dinnertime: Magic Tree House, Book 20

The Animals Go Marching! A Parade of Animals: A Clever Counting Book by Emma Jennings et al

ONE cat is ONE alone, but TWO kittens are...

A CUDDLE OF KITTENS!

Animals are on parade across the pages in this Roger Priddy "picture fit" board book, Picture Fit Board Books: A Parade of Animals: A Clever Counting Book (Priddy Books/St. Martin's Press, 2017), which provides plenty of tactile action in a book which counts up the animals from one to ten.

There are butterflies, bees, ducklings, and fish, giraffes, parrots mice, turtles, elephants, and lions in growing numbers as they march through the book. Book creator-designers Emma Jennings, Robyn Newton, and Kate Ward provide colorful bas-relief animal shapes which fit into recesses in the facing pages to offer additional interest to the animals depicted. Math begins with knowing the numbers and what they mean, and this little book is great for teaching the youngest book lovers about counting and animals.

Eye Spy! Who Am I? An Animal Guessing Game by Steve Jenkins and Robin Page

I have...

two touchy antennae,

six wiggly legs,

two delicate wings,

nine black spots....

What do you spy with your little eye? Who could it be?

Hmmmm. Six legs... thin wings... two antennae...? That could be a lot of crawly critters. But NINE black spots? Which big-time bug boasts black spots?

AH HA! That would be the beneficial and beloved LADY BUG!

Steve Jenkins' and Robin Page's forthcoming nonfiction nature book, Who Am I? An Animal Guessing Game (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017) boasts an animal identification game with five or six salient creature features by which to focus in on the correct critter, from frog to flamingo, crab to rabbit, be it amphibian, bird, crustacean, insect, or mammal.

Realistically but whimsically illustrated by Steve Jenkins'inimitable paper collages and narrated by Robin Page's simple read-alone text for each mystery creature, the book provides two pages of illustrated clues, followed by a page turn to a double-page spread of the complete animal in motion, from a crab grabbing for a minnow to a bunny rabbit, bouncing off-page with a crunchy carrot on board.

Fun to read to one kid or a class, as an initial introduction or a quicky quiz for savvy students, this book is perfect for young preschool or primary-grade nature science students, equipped as it is with am appendix of additional fun facts about each animal and a brief bibliography for older students looking for the requisite "several sources" for their research reports. And with its two die-cut eye holes in the cover, everyone can get ready to spy out the next "undercover" animal.

The Secret of Harper's Woods: The Unicorn in the Barn by Jacqueline K. Ogburn

There had always been talk of a white deer in Harper's Woods. Eric Harper has always wanted to see it, but when he spots a flash of white through the trees, he discovers something else.

The animal stepped away from the underbrush.

It wasn't a deer.

White and glowing, with slender legs and a long curved neck, it raised its head. and I knew. Ponies don't have coats that shimmer like a pearl. And there's never been a pony born with an ivory horn curling from the center of its forehead.

It was a unicorn. It was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen.

Eleven-year-old Eric is filled with a sense of joy unlike anything he's known. He quietly follows the shimmering figure as it limps toward the old farmhouse and barn where his family had lived always until Eric's dad was forced to sell part of the land to pay for his grandmother's nursing home. As he peers through a dusty window in the barn and sees their new neighbor, the veterinarian, Dr. Brancusi, speaking softly to unicorn as she treats her hoof, he is discovered by the vet's angry daughter Allegra. But when Dr. Brancusi learns that Maggie Harper is Eric's grandmother, she surprisingly accepts him, allowing him to listen through her stethoscope to the heartbeats of the twins the unicorn, Moonpearl, is carrying, and swearing him to secrecy, offers him a job helping care for her animal patients.

In due time Eric meets some of Dr. Brancusi's other mystical creatures, Timothy, a talking white cat with an invisible midsection, Prissy, an irascible goose who happens to lay a golden egg now and then, and the Squonk, a strange brown jelly-like thing that lives in a jar of murky water and sometimes sings exquisitely beautiful songs at night. And when his school friend Jamal brings in his gravely ill dog, Eric gets to see the magical powers of Moonpearl's horn cure the pet. Eric begins to save the long white hairs from Moonpearl's coat for a bracelet to help his grandmother. They seem to cure her arthritic hands and Eric hopes that a necklace he and Allegra make will return Grandmother to health.

But trespassing hunters in Harper's Woods, hoping to bag the white deer. spot something white in the woods.

Gunshots! I caught sight of neon orange, a hunter's vest. I crept closer. There were two of them.

I saw a flash of white near a thicket. There was a shot and a yowling sound. Timothy! Those morons were shooting at Timothy!

I stepped out from behind the tree, yelling. "Aaah!" I screamed. My left leg was on fire. I felt blood soaking through my jeans.

Eric's leg has only a minor wound, but in rapid order things take a significant turn. His dad discovers the magical nature of some of Dr. Brancusi's patients, Moonpearl takes this time to have her babies, and Grandmother has a heart attack and Eric fears he will lose the only one who understands how he feels about the creatures. And when Grandmother Harper dies, Eric feels lost in the swirl of events.

But Grandmother leaves him a personal letter which explains everything.

If you are reading this I must be gone. There are other things, wonderful, magical things that appear in our woods. We Harpers have always looked out for them. I always knew that you would be the one.

Jacqueline K. Ogburn's reverent but magical story, The Unicorn in the Barn (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017) is gentle and sweet, both a fantasy adventure and a tender coming-of-age story of a young boy who feels a calling for his family's long held a unique relationship with the creatures of their land, ordinary and extraordinary. Eric assumes his role as one of the two Harpers who bear the family responsibility to protect that spirit of goodness that the unicorn represents in this moving magical tale of family and mysteries beyond things seen. Children who are drawn to myths and imaginings just beyond the real will find that this extraordinary novel points to more than a literary brush with the supernatural.

To My Little Dear: (Alphaprints) Sweet Heart by Roger Priddy

Ready for a Bear Hug?

Who wouldn't want a hug from a friendly bright-pink bear cubby with die-cut ears full of fluffy fur for little fingers to touch and feel?

There also is a pretty pair of bright blue birds, sparkly and feathery, and boobies birds with shiny blue feet.

There are soft-coated puppies and a velvety family of sleeping mice, snuggling and cuddling, all with fingerprint faces and described in simple rhymes, in this touchable, feelable board book in Roger Priddy's popular Alphaprints series, Alphaprints: Sweet Heart (St. Martin's Press, 2016), just in time for sharing with the youngest sweethearts you know on Valentine's Day.

BIG & S-H-I-N-Y! Alphaprint Colors by Roger Priddy

YELLOW SLINKY SNAKES SLITHER THROUGH THE YELLOW DIRT.

Most little ones won't see slinky snakes slithering often, but they will remember seeing such a sight, in Roger Priddy's certainly unusual book of colors for tiny tots. With a rainbow caterpillar on the cover, this color concept board book is sturdy enough to teach colors to a sequence of several toddlers.

With a RED fox running, ORANGE apes swinging, and GREEN crocodiles crawling, there are animals and colors to learn to recognize, along with plenty of alliteration to tantalize the ears of kids up to Kindergarten age, in Roger Priddy's Alphaprints: Colors (Priddy Books/St. Martin's Press, 2015),

For a little more whimsy, there are also BLACK whales, purple beetles, PINK pigs, and tactile fingerprint faces to touch and feel, with bright-colored foil thumb tabs to take little ones back to peruse their favorite color pages, too. A super-sturdy board book for every toddler's concept book library!

Stats! Animals by the Numbers: A Book of Animal Infographics by Steve Jenkins

Numbers help us understand our world.

When it comes to animals, numbers are especially important. How big is a whale? How loud is a lion's roar? It would be difficult to answer these questions--even to ask them--without numbers.

In this book, facts and figures abut animals are presented visually as graphs, symbols, and illustrations. Infographics give us another way of looking at animals.

Author-artist Steve Jenkins is rightly famous for his exquisite illustrations of the world of animals fashioned elegantly with layered paper collage and a fine eye for detail. But no child can look at those pictures without asking questions. How big is it? How long does it live? How many of them live in the world?

The answers to these questions involve numbers. but delivering the answers about many animals would involve endless words, sentences, and pages--mind-numbing numbers of them!

In his newest book, Animals by the Numbers: A Book of Infographics (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016), Steve Jenkins turns to infographics, a symbolic way to represent masses of numbers graphically, making them easy to compare and understand.

How loud is a lion's roar? In a typical two-page spread, Jenkins first defines the decibel, the unit of measure for sounds, in an infographic full of surprising comparisons: an insect called a water boatman can be as loud as a lawn mower, a bush cricket and that rhetorical lion can match a chainsaw's 110 decibels, and a little creature called a bulldog bat, the noise champ of land animals, can equal a jet plane's takeoff roar at 140 decibels. Deep under the sea, though, the pistol shrimp is the diva of decibels, with a prey-stunning blast of 200 decibels.

There are plenty of Gees! and Wows! and not a few Yikes! among Jenkin's variety of infographic symbols--bar graphs, line graphs, symbols, flow charts, and the rest--including one using little clothespin figure symbols that show the number of human deaths caused by various animals, some of which prompt all three exclamations: sharks cause only an average of 10 deaths per year; crocodiles cause 1,600, (a mere pittance compared to, yes, the dog at 55,000 deaths per year.) But the champion man killer, the mosquito, gets most of a whole double-page spread for those rows and rows of little doomed figures--a million lives per year.

The author's variety of infographic types is amazing in their variety, but more so in their ease of almost instant understanding and ability to portray a lot of information in a small space. A graphic artist like Jenkins is himself a rare beast indeed, in the beauty of his classy artistic sensibility, his passion for nature science, and his distinctive style of representing numerical concepts with flair and polished panache.

Steve Jenkins' Animals by the Numbers: A Book of Infographics is yet another necessary purchase for all public and school libraries, a book than even math teachers may want to own for their own bookshelves.

How to Train Your Dragon: Bridge to the Wild: Behind the Scenes at the Zoo by Caitlin O'Connell

In the heart of many cities, there is a jungle.

That jungle is the zoo, a world to itself, in some ways a wild world, and in some ways perhaps the most civilized place in the world.

Zoologist and elephant specialist Caitlin O'Connell takes us with her for an unusual day at the zoo, one which shows the reader what happens behind the scenes and why it happens.

Before dawn breaks at Zoo Atlanta, we hear that world waking up before we see it. The many birds in the aviary section provide the dawn chorus, especially the ground hornbill, with his huge goo hoos, and the kori bustard, the largest of the flighted birds with a wingspan of eight feet, with his booming mating call that definitely breaks the day for the keepers.

But the first stop is at the panda house. There are the adorable baby pandas who reach out to the visitors, along with the still-unsolved mystery of panda fertility, or lack of it as the case may be. Tidbits of panda lore include the fact that pandas have evolved an extra thumb-like protrusion that functions as a bamboo peeler which makes for easier chewing of their primary food, important since the large vegans have to spend virtually all their waking hours just chewing their way through the fibrous food that keeps them alive.

Other fascinating stops are at the meerkat compound, where their sentries are already on duty, scouring the skies for raptors and engaging in enforcing the rigid "pecking order" that maintains order in their large colonies, and a stop at the lion enclosures, with their highly paternalistic family groupings.

But the most moving visits are those to the great primates, gorillas and orangutans, our closest cousins, where we learn that male gorillas interpret eye-to-eye contact as aggression, that some gorilla mothers, like Jennifer, are total "helicopter moms," some females, like Cudzu, are clearly the beauty queens of the troop, admired by their court and suitors, while other mothers, like Madu, the Supermom, willingly adopt orphans and raise them well, even bottle feeding the infants and taking them to keepers for treatment when they seem ill. Sadly like their human counterparts, gorilla troops also include "mean girls" who make life lonely for females like Sukari at the bottom of the social order.

Visits to amphibians and reptiles include getting eyeball to eyeball with the black mamba and a scary inside-the-fence experiment in training Komodo dragons. But author Caitlin O'Connell, Sibert Award-winning author of Houghton-Mifflin Harcourt's A Baby Elephant in the Wild and The Elephant Scientist (Scientists in the Field Series) (read my reviews here), has her first love with the elephants, where she describes the "circle of love" that elephants create for their family group. With twenty-five years as a pachyderm expert, O'Connell describes the particular social structure that exists to protect and ensure their survival, with pecking order, cliques, bullying and the rest of the behaviors that have parallels among social mammals.

Caitlin O'Connell's forthcoming today, Bridge to the Wild: Behind the Scenes at the Zoo (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016), with its many sensitive, informing, and even funny color photographs provided by her partner Timothy Rodwell, offers so much more than a stroll through the exhibits at the zoo, with fascinating insights into testing animal intelligence and veterinary medicine for the captive animals. Who knew that gorillas substitute paper bags in place of the large leaves that they use as umbrellas in the wild, or that zoo vets have trained male lions to open their mouths willingly for dental exams and stick their tails through the bars for blood tests?

There is all that and many other choice tidbits of life in our "bridge to the wild," our local zoos, shared in this attractive and well-documented account of modern zoo work and life. O'Connell acknowledges that in a perfect world all species would live healthy and long lives in their native environments, but until that utopia exists, many wild animals are dependent upon zoos and preserves for their continued survival, and for that knowledgeable and caring professionals are essential. For middle readers who love animals and may want to make careers in caring for them their lives' work, this book is a must read and is surely a first purchase for school and public libraries.

Valuable back matter includes "Data Sheets" from observational charts by zoo naturalists as examples for would-be animal scientists and an excellent index.

Animagicals: Presto Chang-O, or A Book of Animal Magic by Edouard Manceau

Here you'll find a magic book

Where all's not what it seems.

PRESTO CHANGE-O

For when you turn each object round,

The unexpected will be seen.

Can YOU change a bowl of green salad into a turtle?

Or how about a little legerdemain to convert a hot air balloon into a rabbit?

In his hard-to-resist toy-and-movable-book, illustrator and designer Edouard Manceau offers some sturdy moving parts and a lot of artistry in a bit of bibliographic transforming. By moving a few jointed parts, a black cauldron becomes the perky raccoon on the cover. On another page, a rocket becomes a penguin "flying" through his underwater habitat. A fancy teapot transforms itself into elephant and back again, and a clock slips into the shape of an owl on its perch.

It's fun for young fingers and a treat for the eyes in Manceau's latest, Presto Change-O: A Book of Animal Magic (Chronicle Books, 2014), giving preschoolers a chance to work a little magic with their own fingertips.

For an absorbing lesson in shapes and their manipulation into basic graphic forms, try Edouard Manceau's delightful Windblown (Owlkids Books, 2013) with a little help from his invisible friend the wind (with downloadable, printable shapes for kids to experiment with)  here.

Guess Who? Animals...And Their Families by Barbara Nascimbeni

My Sound: I Roar
My Home: Sea Ice
My Meal: Seals, Fish

WHO AM I?

Barbara Nascimbeni's just-out Animals and Their Families (Owlkids Books, 2012) adopts a novel device for presenting common domestic and wild animals to the very young. This sturdy and generously sized board book presents a large silhouette of an animal in profile on the left-hand page, while on the facing right-hand page we see gentle stylized drawings of the subject animal in its habitat caring for its young, along with names for the male, female, and baby when appropriate. For example, the reader learns that the baby polar bear is a cub, and his daddy bear is called a boar and mommy bear is a sow. At the bottom of the page are circles presenting the factual clues about vocalization, habitat, and diet.

Animals range from the friendly and furry (cats, dogs, rabbits) among pets to the useful domestic types (pigs, horses, cows, chickens) to the well-known wild and free-ranging (wolves, giraffes, tigers, deer) and the more exotic wild ones usually seen in zoos and aquariums (octopuses, crocodiles, sharks). There are wet pets like fish, and wet non-pets such as penguins and frogs. There are animals that go low on the ground (snakes and snails) and animals that soar through the air (bats and owls). Animals range from crustacea to fish, reptiles, birds, and mammals.

The double-page format provides opportunity for guessing games with one child or a story circle, by showing only the silhouette or by reading only the three-part descriptions, from easy ones like the horse (I neigh; I live in a stable or paddock; I eat grass and hay) or the more exotic like the crocodile (I chomp; I live in rivers and marshlands; I eat zebras, antelopes, fish--!) The soft, gentle illustrations and the super sturdy page stock make this book attractive for little ones to "read" on their own. A good choice for the preschool animal book shelf.

Nonfiction Books That Make the Grade: Big Science Ideas

Crabtree, one of the stalwarts in quality nonfiction publishing for the elementary grades, has a new primary zoology series titled Big Science Ideas, written and edited by the noted Bobbie Kalman.

The series sets out to teach some of the basic concepts in zoology--the characteristics and behavior of animals. Among the already published books in the series are three which deal with the feeding characteristics of animals, What Is a Carnivore? (Big Science Ideas), What Is a Herbivore? (Big Science Ideas) and What Is an Omnivore? (Big Science Ideas) and the recent What Is a Vertebrate? (Big Science Ideas).

Each of these books definitively presents the basic concepts of its subject within a framework of scientific observation and classification. For example, What Is a Vertebrate? (Big Science Ideas). clearly defines vertebrates as animals with backbones, and in a colorful double-page spread shows the human skull and backbone with examples of the each of the five classes of vertebrates. The next chapter describes the skeleton (bony or cartilaginous), the head and skull of vertebrates, and how their joints articulate and are moved by muscle systems. This background information is followed by a closer look at the different characteristics of each class of vertebrates--fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals.

The numerous photos, while clearly calculated to draw the attention of primary-aged kids, are meticulously chosen to illustrate the concepts presented in the adjacent text. For example, in the chapter "Reptiles with Shells," photos of crawling land turtles and swimming sea turtles are accompanied by labeled drawings of their respective skeletons to show how they are adapted for movement on land and in water. Likewise, photos of bird skeletons and their wing skeletons show how they are adapted for flight, and a similar page design shows how the bills of various birds accommodate their methods of feeding by contrasting the bills of a hummingbird, a pelican, and an eagle and an egret.

All volumes in this series introduce scientific terms in boldface and define them specifically or by context in the text. All of these terms are also defined in child-friendly language in the glossary, and a full index is also included. Accelerated Reader levels for this series range from 3.5 to 3.7. And unlike most children's nonfiction books, which tend to be on the pricey side, this series comes in at a modest price easy on the bottom line.

How Great to Hibernate!: Sleep, Black Bear, Sleep

Jane Yolen, working with her daughter Heidi Stemple and illustrator Brooks Dyer, has created a bedtime book for everyone--or, at least for twelve wild animals and one quiescent little human.

Yolen's latest, Sleep, Black Bear, Sleep is a picture book which works on two different levels. As a subliminal sleepy-time story, it shows animals from black bear to toad sleeping, nodding, lolling, yawning, dozing, and snoring in a variety of cozy anthropomorphic jammies and bedclothes, snoozing on sofas, and resting on recliners, until the most energetic among us feels our eyelids drooping and hears our comforters calling. The final page shows a little girl with tousled blonde curls dreaming through a snowstorm with plush versions of the twelve featured animals snuggled all around her.

And even YOU, it's time for sleep,
So snuggle down and burrow deep.
The sheet and quilt will keep you warm
Through winter or through summer storm
Till you awaken in the morn.
Sleep, my little child, sleep.

On another level, however, the text conveys a subtle awareness of the varied ways animals practice hibernation, dormancy, or torpor, as such forms of deep sleep are known in scientific terms. For example, the gopher rests in a burrow, but rouses to "snack a little bit," since gophers are known to store winter food and wake occasionally to feed. Turtle "snoozes" in underground mud until spring sun warms his habitat enough to bring his ectothermic body back to an active state. Frog sleeps deeply at the bottom of a frozen stream without waking until spring, drawing oxygen from the cold water transdermally. Although the science lesson is not overt, this book offers great possibilities for discussion of the different ways animals use dormancy to adapt to winter habitats.

Sleep, black bear, sleep.
The hills are bare and steep.
You hibernate through winter's snow;
Your heart beats steady, strong, and slow.
You wait till spring to rise and go.
Sleep, black bear, sleep.

As always, Yolen (Caldecott author of Owl Moon) has a talent for flowing, rhyming text intelligently matched to her subject. Illustrator Brooks Dyer's drawings are soft and cozy when portraying the animals at rest, but each double-page spread also contains an icon of the animal's active phase (chipmunk's running sneakers or mouse planting a flag on a green-cheese moon). There's a lot more to learn and see here than just a cuddly, quick bedtime ditty. This one is a winner!