What Do You Do With A Tail Like This?

Title: What Do You Do With A Tail Like This? (Caldecott Honor Book)

Author & Illustrators: Steve Jenkins & Robin Page

Publisher & Date of Publication: Houghton Mifflin Children's Books, 2003

Genre: Informational, Picture book

Grade Level: K-3

Summary: What Do You Do With A Tail Like This? is an informational, picture book about different animals and their body parts. A question is asked and the body part of the animal that the question is asking about is illustrated. Then on the following page the answers to the questions are given. The questions asked are; "What do you do with a nose like this?", "What do you do with ears like these?", "What do you do with a tail like this?", What do you do with eyes like these?", "What do you do with feet like these?", and "What do you do with a mouth like this?", in that order. At the end of the book descriptions and information is given about the different animals that were asked about in the book.

Response: I think this is a wonderful and very informative book for growing minds. I liked the illustrations of the different animals. I also liked the way uncommon animals were used in the book. Young children have probably never heard of some of the animals so this book is a great learning experience. I even learned from the book, so I know my students would learn a lot from it. I could see myself reading this to my class and being surprised at the things I learned from it. It made me feel young and innocent again, because of the information that I did not already know that I learned from the simple picture book. The book kind of reminded me of Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? I think it was because of the animal associations and maybe because of the illustrations.

Teaching Ideas: Have your students draw an animal that they have made up. Make sure they draw the body parts from the book; nose, tail, eyes, feet. Then have your students describe the animal to you, and then tell you what each body part is used for. For older students (second and third grade) have them write down their description and the uses of the body parts. For younger students (Kindergarten and first grade) have them tell you and then have them write down their favorite body part and what it does.