"What Do You Do With a Tail Like This?"

2003 Caldecott Honor Book

"What Do You Do With a Tail Like This?"

Author: Robin Page

Illustrator: Steve Jenkins

Houghton Mufflin Company 2003

Picture Book, Informative, K-3

I can not wait to read this to my elementary class! They will absolutely love this book. Students will enjoy trying to guess the animals that the noses, tails, ears, etc. belong to before they are revealed on the next page. When students listen to the interesting animal facts, I believe that they will want to know more about these animals. The facts that the children learn from reading this book will be facts that they will remember to tell their parents, grandparents, and friends. This book may even lead students to do some research on their own if they are interested in a specific animal the book introduces.

The illustrations are astonishing. It is amazing that the illustrations are a cut-paper collage, which is where various types of paper are cut or torn and pieced together onto a background to create a picture. The texture of the animals look very realistic-the skunk's tail looks bushy and furry while the four-eyed fish looks slimy and smooth. The white background really brings out the beauty and the details of the indvidual pictures on the pages. The animals's noses, ears, tails, eyes, feet, mouths, and facial expressions look very real. I especially thought that the nose of the hyena and the leg of the mosquito looked real-I had to touch them to be sure that they were not! The illustrations no doubt communicate symbolically through the use of background, colors, and texture. The backgrounds and effects for each animal are different, which adds more characteristics to the animals. For example, the platypus is swimmng through the water, the whale is diving vertically down the page, the monkey is hanging from a tree, the horned lizard is squirting blood from his eyes, the gecko is upside down, and the pelican's head is down in the water with his mouth wide open to catch a fish. I think that the artistic medium greatly enhances the book in that in that it is very unique and looks so much like the real animals.

The text is in a very unique setting around each animal. This is great integration of the text with the pictures. The text slides along the body of the animal or is right beside the animal's picture. This is good to prevent confusion among beginning readers who may not know which sentence would match the animal.

"What Do You Do With a Tail Like This?" is worthy of the Caldecott Medal Honor Award because it captivates young readers with the true-to-life illustrations while teaching interesting facts about all kinds of different animals.