Customer Reviews

Whose Tracks Are These? A Clue Book of Familiar Forest Animals

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This was an excellent book! The illustrations are bright and beautiful coupled with a magnificant story. Each set of footprints are shown in their natural environment and they are accompanied by a full page of clues that start hard and get easier before you are shown the animal that the clues are about. Here is an example. "I need to run fast because many animals hunt my kind. I will zig-zag to make it hard to catch me, then dash into the bushes to escape". Then there are more clues until finally the last clue is "My white, puffy tail is another clue to who I am." Of course by reading the clues you start to figure out by this time that you are talking about a Rabbit. This book really helped me to understand more about the eco-system I am surrounded by. When we go outside I am more observant and can even share show some of the tracks I learned to my sisters, Merlyn and Shirley. Be sure to get this book!

In the process of looking at animal tracking books for a program I'm putting together for kindergarten classes of a local elementary school, I've looked at whatever age-appropriate publications I could find and found this to be the best children's, illustrated, animal track book.

The illustrator does a very nice job accurately portraying the tracks and track patterns of the animals featured, which include white-tailed deer, red fox, gray squirrel, cottontail rabbit, raccoon, chipmunk, and mice - she clearly did her homework. The depictions of the animals in their habitats are a delight. A human element, in the form of children recreating in the scenes, is interwoven throughout, yet is presented in an unobtrusive fashion that lets the animals and their tracks take center stage.

In addition, rather than depict generic plants in the illustrations, her attention to detail goes even further with trees, wildflowers, aquatic plants, and ferns recognizable as a part of woodland plant communities of the NE U.S. And if you look closely, there are little bonus surprises in each scene, such as a bird nest in a tree converted to a mouse nest and assorted critters, including indigenous summer and winter bird species.

The author's text, combined with the illustrations, provides enough clues as to the animals that pass through the scenes depicted without making the book too wordy. The book closes with a very nice and appropriate "Who am I?" description/role of the forest and the life it supports, featured on the preceding pages of the book. The back and front covers are also very attractive and artfully done.

If there is a drawback, it is the relatively small size of the book compared to larger "picture books", but it should be large enough for a group of up to 25 children sitting closely around their teacher for a group reading exercise.

This book will be the primary classroom resource I'll be providing to the teachers I'm working with, in preparation for taking their students outdoors to search for animal tracks and sign in woodlands around their school. I'm very glad to have it as a resource and I think it will benefit the teachers and their students tremendously.

Six different animals are profiled (squirrel, chipmunk, deer, raccoon, fox, rabbit). Contrary to the product description on Amazon, many suburban children have a good chance of encountering some or all of these animals on a hike in the woods, if not in their own backyard. (Certainly true here in Colorado, as well as in New England where I grew up.) It's not a moose, after all.

Great concept let down by somewhat wonky illustrations. The weakest area seems to be head-on shots; animal profiles are much more realistic. (Shouldn't be a problem for kids, though.) And for some reason, the smallest animals seem to be the angriest. I won't pretend that animals in the wild are smiling at all times, but the chipmunk on page 10 seems ready to attack.

Overall, positive wildlife and nature message.


(Roberts Rinehart Publishers/Court Wayne Press now part of Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group)

My son and I love this book! The illustrations are beautiful and wonderfully detailed. This book is on regular rotation in our Bedtime story book collection.

Wish there were more books from Mr. Nail!