Come and explore the fascinating ways that animals can use their tails, ears, eyes, mouths, noses, and feet through the interactive and colorfully illustrated book titled What Do You Do With a Tail Like This? Illustrator Steve Jenkins and wife Robin Page create a fun and interactive guessing game throughout the entire story. Jenkins cut-paper art is shown on a one-page spread, while allowing only for the specific animals' tails, ears, eyes, mouths, etc. to be shown - accompanied by the text asking (i.e. What Do You Do With a Nose Like This?). The pages following present the reader with a full-page bleed of illustrations that show full bodies of animals, coupled with the answers to the questions asked on the previous pages. "If you're a scorpian, your tail can give a nasty sting," "If you're a lizard, you break off your tail to get away."While researching what medium Jenkins utilized, I found a Q&A review regarding how he creates his cut-paper collages. "Once he knows what he wants to illustrate, he collects his references. He may visit many zoos, or the aquarium. He takes photographs and looks at a lot of books. "I don't do the actual studies there, but I do find it useful to get an appreciation of how beautiful and subtle they really are. I do an outline drawing based on the references and how I want them to look on the page. Then I do a quick color setting to figure out what paper I'm going to use in the collage. Finally I cut and tear." The Q&A also mentioned that Jenkins is continually collecting all different kinds of paper, most of them being from other countries that have a tradition of hand made paper, such as Japan.(www.childrenslit.com/mai/jenkins_steve.html) Still after knowing this, it truly amazes me how he creates these illustrations just from cut-paper collages. How can he create such life-like fur, skin, and feathers with just paper? QUITE FASCINATING YET UNBELIEVABLE! His cover illustration is a full page bleed of the lizard, showing only his tail on the front cover, while the text wraps itself around the coiling, long, green tail. The back cover, once opened up, shows the entire body of the lizard. Later in the book, it is revealed that, "If you're a lizard, you break off your tail to get away." OUCH!
As most characters in the book will most likely be familiar to children, such as the elephant, chimpanzee, or the hippo - strange creatures such as a four-eyed fish and a blue-footed booby will surely capture children's eyes and ears. The pages at the very end of the book also provide further information and facts about the creatures mentioned in the book and allow for the opportunity to learn more about the animals that they've met in the story. According to a review by Children's Literature, What Do You Do With a Tail Like This "is a perfect choice for talking with preschoolers about similarities and differences and an essential introduction to any second through fourth grade animal units because it teaches readers to be sharper observers of any animal's features and how the animal can use that feature." And I completely agree. I even learned quite a bit from this story - like the blue-footed booby?!?! That will get quite the laugh from students!
After reading this story, I am interested in reading more stories by Jenkins and Page. The illustrative and writing styles presented in this story continually kept me guessing, wondering, learning, and still I had questions after reading. Isn't this just what we want from our students??
My Questions: Where did blue-footed boobies get their name? Why do they have blue feet? I found some info regarding these questions here on National Geographic for Kids. "Booby" means "bobo" or clumsy (stupid in Spanish) because these birds are somewhat clumsy and slow on land. The males feet are strikingly blue when they are ready to mate with females (yes, they have blue feet, too!) The males do all they can to make sure females notice their feet. How romantic! http://nationalgeographic.com/Animals/CreatureFeature/BlueBooby
Sounds like such a fun read! Collage artwork (ironic that I, too, blogged about an illustrator using collage...seriously, Amy - this is getting too weird!) is truly amazing. I would love to know how much time goes into creating just one illustration using collage. I can't imagine how long it takes to complete an entire picture book. It's amazing how the different papers (colors, textures, patters, etc.) can come together to create the overall realism of the topic.
ReplyDeleteI can see my first graders loving the questioning as well as the information about "odd" animals. I love when children have exposure to things they won't find in their backyard, and it's even more exciting when it is done in a fun way!
This reminds me so much of a books called Beaks! by Sneed Collard and Robin Brickman. http://www.amazon.com/Beaks-Sneed-B-Collard/dp/1570913889
ReplyDeleteBeaks! similiarly presents a variety of different kinds of beaks and explains the very specific purposes that each type and design of beak serves for the different bird's habitat, diet, defense, etc. This book would be a neat follow-up to take a more in-depth look at some of the evolutionary principles behind this type of diversification.
I like that you stated that the illustrations kept you actively engaged and questioning the story as you read - this is an interesting link to the comments in this week's homework interviews by Simon and Gibbons about wanting children to be interested and engaged to the point where questioning was inspired. I will take your questioning as a sign of a successful "marriage" (as Gibbons calls it) between text and illustration!