Member Reviews
Personally, I've always had problems visualizing scale. Telling me that an animal weighs up to a ton means very little. I do much better with comparative size and I know that is true of small children as well. It's much easier to imagine the size of an animal when we can see the size of it's paw print compared to a human hand. Pair that comparison with a paragraph of basic information on the animal and you have a solid book for young readers.
Eight animals can give the reader a high-five and in so doing human hands and animal paw sizes are compared. Life-size imprints of the forest animal tracks are featured and interesting and educational facts are presented. Not only is this book engaging but interactive as well. Kids will love it!
The various animals included are: opossum, river otter, bobcat, coyote, cougar, wolf, black ear and moose. The colourful illustrations are big, bold and beautiful. The text is simple, factual and will delight young readers. I recommend this book.
This beautifully illustrated picture book kept the full attention of my four year old. He loved hearing the words and seeing the pictures, and of course he really loved when he got to size up his hand to their paw. As an adult, I appreciated that the brief facts were a combination of well known and lesser known facts.
I thought this was such an inventive way of teaching children some early biology beyond which animals are which, I love that it’s interactive and encourages them to draw their own hands and feet to compare, this a thoroughly wonderful and enjoyable book, will definitely be buying a physical copy for my nieces
Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for a free copy for an honest opinion
A colourful early biology book, telling us a few factoids and details about eight specific animals. The big selling point is that we get to see how large their footprints are when they make tracks, as a life-size diagram to compare with our own hand size – thus we can see how surprisingly large the otter's might be, and how broad that of the brown bear. The things that let the volume down for me are the artistic style, which goes for cartoonish variants as opposed to anything full of realism, and that the critters are all North American – and when they're not, such as the hare, they're talked about as of belonging on the prairies. Not globally successful, then – but not too bad, all told.
What it says on the tin: Some animals, with a print of their paws, hooves or whatever they use to get about, in comparison to a human's hand. Each animal - and all of these can be found in forests, if you ignore habitat loss and such depressing topics - comes with a few fun facts, like that otter poop in party.
I like that the measurements of the feet come both in imperial measurements and the metric system, because I am all for raising children on both, or, well, the metric system if I would have to choose one.
The illustrations are very blocky, you could re-create them with crafting paper if you had enough patience and motivation to do so.
I think that it is smart to draw the reader in with the comparisons, and will interest tiny readers enough so they'll stay interested in their future.
The arc was provided by the publisher.
Review to come to blog on Dec 21st. Then later on Goodreads/etc.
I received this book from Netgalley in exchange of an honest review.
Look at that ADORABLE cover, how could anyone resist? Plus, I love the idea of putting your hand on the paw and see the difference~
In this book we meet various animals and read facts about them, and of course, the biggest pull of the book, put your hand over the pawprint and see how it compares. Now, it wasn't just compare the animal print for me, haha, I don't have big hands but they are bigger than the audience for this book, aka little kids. XD So at times I had to lift my hand up to see just how I was doing. And I guess maybe I should have cleaned my hands even better, but those cookiedough parts won't come off (had another fun bake-a-thon Friday). Haha, so my screen needed some cleaning, teehee. And I finally found a print that matched with my hand, or well close to it, the moose comes close~
I had fun reading the book. It is a short and simple book with just 3-4 facts + an introduction, so this is one for the early readers (but since I am reading it, I would also think that the older readers will enjoy it as well). The facts are fun though and I liked reading what the authors picked out the plethora of facts that exist about various animals. Like I didn't know that opossums ate that many ticks. Or that otters poop in groups and that their poop is called spraint. OK...
A big big YAS for adding cm and mm and km and the likes. A lot of US books don't do that, but I think it is handy to do as your book is bound to go outside of the US. This saves editing. Or if there is no editing people having to freaking calculate. I mean, we use the metric and that is what we are taught in school. I really wouldn't know how much inches are in a centimetre or something like that.
The illustrations were so pretty and I love the style. It reminds me of another animal book (maybe series even) that I read some time ago.
All in all, this fun and creative book will be sure a hit. I can remember that as a kid (and well, now as an adult I am still the same) that I used to love seeing how things were in comparison to my hands or feet. Recommended!
A basic educational picture book giving titbits about a few selected wild animals.
The presentation is easily accessible for the reading age group.
The illustrations are a bit dark and bright. Hope it catches the attention for the book.
Thank you, publisher and author/artist, for the advance reader copy.
A great little book to read along with your little cubs. Compare paw size while you learn new information on many North American species. Easy to pick up where you left off, facts are listed in headings and 1-2 sentence blurbs. Amazing information for younger readers to engage with while being read to. Vocabulary can be a little challenging in this read. Illustrations are stylized and colorful while adding greatly to understanding of text.
A very cute interactive book that invites children to compare the size of their hands to the paw prints of several animals native to North America. Each two-page spread features a picture of the animal, a life-size paw print, and a few assorted fun facts about the animal and their behavior.
Kids will love to compare themselves to the animals, which will keep them engaged with the story. Because of the interactive nature, this would be best as a small group or individual read. This would be a very popular book in pre-K and early elementary classrooms!
Many thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review!