What Do You Do With a Tail Like This? By Steve Jenkins & Robin Page

1. Bibliography

Jenkins, Steve, and Robin Page. What Do You Do with a Tail like This? Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 2008.

2. Plot Summary

Through illustrations, questions, and scientific facts, readers can explore many different species including Jack Rabbits, Bats, and Skunks in this fun, interactive book by Steve Jenkins. 

3. Critical Analysis

This fun, playful, inquisitive, informational children’s book asks the question, “what do you do with a tail like this?” as well as “feet like these”, “eyes like these”, and more. Readers will begin to wonder about the purpose of parts, and Jenkins provides the answers. “If you’re a giraffe, you brush off pesky flies with your tail,” he shares. Along with answers to what animal parts are used for, Jenkins includes colorful illustrations of the animals and their different parts, giving readers a visual for the information being shared. Young readers can listen and look along, absorbing the information. Along with the child friendly short answers and illustrations, Jenkins provides longer descriptions and information in the back of the book. This book is both fun and a great resource for young readers who are interested in animals. 

4. Award(s) and Review Excerpt(s)

• 2004 Caldecott 
  
• From School Library Journal: “Jenkins, this time in collaboration with his wife, has created yet another eye-opening book.”
  
• From Kirkus Review: “Not only does Jenkins (Life on Earth, 2002, etc.) again display a genius for creating paper-collage wildlife portraits with astonishingly realistic skin, fur, and feathers, but here on alternate spreads he zooms in for equally lifelike close-ups of ears, eyes, noses, mouths, feet, and tails.”
  

5. Connections

Gather other texts by Steve Jenkins:

• Creature Features: Twenty-Five Animals Explain Why They Look the Way They Do. ISBN 0544233514
  
• Never Smile at a Monkey: And 17 Other Important Things to Remember. ISBN 061896620X
  
• Actual Size. ISBN 0618375945
  

Gather other non fiction texts for younger audiences:

• Brown, Margaret Wise. The Important Book. ISBN 0064432270
  
• Keating, Jess. What Makes a Monster?: Discovering the World's Scariest Creatures. ISBN 0553512307
  
• Stewart, Melissa. Can an Aardvark Bark? ISBN 1481458523
  
• Bishop, Nic. Penguin Day. ISBN 0545206367
  

Use as an introduction to a biology unit

Use to model author’s purpose