Lifesize

Cleverly designed around the question “How big?” Henn’s oversize book illustrates animals and their parts in real-life size. Clean, bright colors capture everything from an elephant’s toenail to the diminutive bee hummingbird; readers can stare into the startling eye of a giant squid, high-five a polar bear, and gape at a tiger’s (terrifyingly large) maw. Life-size illustrations are marked and interspersed with spreads showing the creature in its habitat with other flora and fauna. Simple text encourages participation with the images—“ROOOAAAARRR like a Bengal tiger!”—and offers basic facts: “Giraffes... are the world’s TALLEST animal so it makes sense that they have an extraordinarily long tongue.” An ingenious visual scale shows the relative sizes of the animals measured against the volume—12 inches square—a neat trick for young readers fuzzy on feet and inches. A read-over-and-over-again delight. Ages 3–up. [em](Sept.) [/em]