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: Houghton Mufflin Company, 2003
Genre: Picture book/ Informative
Age Range: K-3
Awards: 2003 caldecott honor book

Summary: The Author goes through and describes each sense and informs about different types of animals. She says what do you do with eyes like these and goes on to show and describe different types of animals that use their eyes for different things. She goes through and uses eyes, feet, ears, nose, and mouth. The pictures used cut paper collage only.

Response: I loved everything about this book; the way it was set up, the information in it, and especially the pictures. The illustrator used only cut-paper collages to illustrate this book. And you can tell so much time was put in to this book. The papers were perfect colors and even textures. You can tell some were cut and some were torn or wrinkled to get that perfect look. I also really liked how it went through as a picture book and at the end of the book it ended up with definitions and a little background on each animal in the book. I was even unaware of half of the information in this book. For instances platypus, uses there nose to dig in mud…. I had no idea! I thought that was great because with that you can use this book with very young kids and older kids!

Teaching Ideas: This book could be integrated easily in a science class discussing animals. You could have the students pick one of the animals in the book they found interesting and have them do a little research on it. You could also use this book discussing the 5 senses; touch, sound, sight, smell, hearing. You could have each describe an animal that uses each and why. This would also be a great book in art if you were doing a session on paper collages. The pictures are fabulous.