What Do You Do with a Tail Like This? (Caldecott Honor Book)

Customer Reviews

• A must!  Jul 22, 2004 (91 of 97 found this helpful)

  I have never written a review before, but thought I must write one on this book! I have recently purchased 10 books off of amazon and this one if my absolute favorite! My 4 1/2 yr. old loves it as much as I do. I read it to him in the morning and that night I layed in bed with him asking him questions about the animals in the book and the different things they could do and he got every question right. For example I asked him how many teeth an anteater has and he answered correctly, "None!" Well, I'm off to try to find another book like it!

• What Do You Review With A Book Like This  Aug 12, 2006 (45 of 47 found this helpful)

  This book is breathtaking, a real stand-out visually -- and at the same time grippingly educational and fun for kids. If you want to see that dawning light of curiousity and hunger for understanding in a child that's just learning that it's fun to learn, there's no better book than this one.
  
  The animals are rendered with great richness and depth by (if you look closely) beautiful torn-paper collages. It's so skillfully done by Steve Jenkins that all of the creatures are full of personality, and seem to live in a batik-cartoon world.
  
  The riveting part is how there are so many animals that each have unusual stories revealed through fun and different and interesting body parts. This is not a "first animals" book at all. Rather it gains its fascination by showing how animals make so many different uses of their body parts, uses that go against what you first think.
  
  For instance: A platypus uses its nose "to dig in the mud." But "[i]f you're an elephant, you use your nose to give yourself a bath" [image of trunk squirting water back over elephant's head]. For ears, you learn that a jackrabbit uses its ears to keep cool, and crickets have ears on their knees. A chimpanzee can eat with its feet, and a gecko's feet are sticky so it can walk on the ceiling. And so on.
  
  Engrossing and whimsical from page to page again and again. Just wonderful!
  
  At the end of the book, a section includes a one-paragraph "bio" with additional details about each animal, with the rest of the story on the unique appendage. For example, the chimpanzee has some general description, and also this detail about how they eat with their feet: "Like people, they have an opposable thumb. Unlike us, thy also have an opposable big toe. This allows them to pick up and manipulate things with their feet." This description is obviously way more advanced than the book itself -- but children love to hear more of the story about characters or animals from the adult reading to them, and this book gives you (the adult) the back story for every one of them.
  
  I was floored when What Do You Do with a Tail Like This arrived. Giggly and awed at the same time. The reviews didn't prepare me for how much I'd viscerally like this book the moment I opened it! I cannot recommend this highly enough!

• WHAT A FASCINATING, ORIGINAL WORK  Nov 2, 2006 (26 of 28 found this helpful)

  This, simply put, is a book about tails, animal tails. I also covers ears, noses, feet and a number of other parts of the anatome of animals. The illustrations are detailed, beautiful and very, very eye catching. The text is a wealth of information, simply stated, that is very informative. The child that reads this one with an adult cannot help but learn more and more about the wonderful natural world around them. At the end of the book we have a wonderful paragraph on each of the animals covered in the book, again, wonderful information and quite well presented. The book is quite well constructed and can take quite a lot of punishment from grubby little fingers. Obviously a lot of thought and work went into this one and we should be grateful to the authors. Recommend this one highly.

• L U C K Y T W I C E ! ! !  May 25, 2007 (12 of 12 found this helpful)

  It is a good, informative book. Although my 9 years old son seems to be very old for this kind of reading, I still bought it for him because of the book's educational value. Surprise, surprise! - my Big Boy liked the book a lot(!) We now quiz each other about various animals... Another good book that I value a lot for its educational content is Why Some Cats are Rascals, Book 2 by B. Nowiki. I was afraid that in this case my son would to be a "little too little", but he is now reading it and seems to have even more fun... - lucky me, again!
  

• Won over  Apr 4, 2006 (23 of 27 found this helpful)

  I had thought about buying this, but always decided not to. My son (5 years old) checked this out of the library on his own. He loves it. The cut-paper artwork is beautiful. Despite the fact-based discussion, it can be a very fun book to read. On the section about whales being able to hear sounds hundreds of miles away, my son always breaks into a whale song of his own. He also stunned his daycare teachers when they went on-line to check out his assertion that crickets had ears in their knees. So there you have it: fun, educational, beautiful!