Sisters & Brothers: Sibling Relationships in the Animal World

Learn about your colors and animals all at once! It is very interesting, amazing facts, and cool facts about animal colors. My 20 month old loves this book.

I first saw this book at the library. I picked it up and was immediately struck. This book is beautiful. Going through various colors, Steve Jenkins, illustrates and describes animals that are that color. The illustrations made me take notice, but within minutes I found myself reading the entries, one after another. The book is a great read and introduced me to many animals that I was unaware of, and it did so in a fun way that most children can appreciate.

A cool natural history book, geared for slightly older kids... Jenkins groups wildly different animals by color -- blue dart frogs along with hyacinth macaws and blue-tailed skinks, etc. -- and explains how each animal uses their distinctive coloring as an adaptive or defensive trait. There's a lot of tooth-and-claw action here: most of this stuff has to do either with killing prey, avoiding being eaten, or finding a mate. There's also a lot of text -- each of the dozens of animals being profiled gets a little explanatory paragraph next to their picture. The artwork is beautiful (if you like this book, you might also want to check out Jenkins' earlier work, "Biggest, Strongest, Fastest") and there's tons of great zoological information. Just the thing for a budding naturalist to pore over for years to come. (ReadThatAgain!)