What Do You Do With a Tail Like This?

Title: What Do You Do With a Tail Like This?

Author: Robin Page

Illustrator: Steve Jenkins

Publisher and date of Publication: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2003

Genre: Picture Book, Informative Text

Age Range: K-1st Grade

Awards: Caldecott Honor Book

Summary: This book describes how animals survive with the noses, feet, eyes, and tails that they have. It is for young children to understand how animals live. One page shows just the body part they are talking about (ears, tail, etc.) and the next page shows the whole animal and what they use that body part for.

Response: I think this book is wonderful for very young readers and even adults that are curious about different animals. It even has a description in the back of the book of all the animals mentioned and everything about them. This book would be fun for children to read and to guess what animal it is, but they would also learn a lot while doing so. I really like the illustrations in this book because they use bold colors but have such detail in each animal. I think the text in this book is good but the illustrations grasp your attention.

Teaching Ideas: This book would be wonderful for kindergarteners to learn about different animals. Children could draw their favorite animal in the book and write about it or each child could have a different animal and research it. This book could tie in with a science lesson about animals around the world. You could go anywhere with this book.