How to Swallow a Pig: Step-by-Step Advice from the Animal Kingdom

by Steve Jenkins, Robin Page

Overview

In the latest eye-catching escape into the kingdom of Animalia, Steve Jenkins and Robin Page reveal the skills animals use to survive in the wild in an imaginative and humorous how-to format. With step-by-step instructions, readers learn about specific behaviors; how to catch thousands of fish like a humpback whale or how to sew up a nest like a tailorbird. This fascinating and fun illustrated nonfiction melds science, art, biology, and the environment together in a detailed and well-researched book about animals who live and survive in our world today.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780544313651
Publisher:	HMH Books
Publication date:	09/01/2015
Pages:	32
Sales rank:	789,647
Product dimensions:	9.10(w) x 11.00(h) x 0.20(d)
Lexile:	940L (what's this?)
Age Range:	6 - 9 Years

About the Author

Steve Jenkins and Robin Page, creators of the Caldecott Honor book What Do You Do with a Tail Like This? and many more popular titles, live in Boulder, Colorado. Visit their website at www.stevejenkinsbooks.com.

Editorial Reviews

★ 08/31/2015
Jenkins and Page are back with a tongue-in-cheek “how to” guide to hunting, building, and protecting oneself like more than a dozen animals. Numbered instructions, accompanied by Jenkins’s always excellent paper collages, demonstrate how to repel insects like a capuchin monkey, catch a meal like a crocodile (“When an egret lands nearby to pick up one of your sticks, you know what to do”), or defend oneself like an armadillo. Beneath the irreverent tone, there’s ample information about the animals’ traits and behavior (and even more in an appendix), adding up to a highly enjoyable mix of science and humor. Ages 6–9. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

* "Jenkins and Page present another fascinating, fun, and attractive look at the natural world."
—School Library Journal, starred review

"Youngsters who glory in learning animal facts will be thrilled; for those who enjoy pretending, there are inviting opportunities for imitation. Readers and listeners alike will eat this one up."
—Kirkus

* "Colorful, precise, and often striking against the white pages, the cut-paper collage illustrations fulfill their purpose beautifully. Fascinating facts presented with droll wit—a winning combination."
—Booklist, starred review

* "Numbered instructions, accompanied by Jenkins’s always excellent paper collages, demonstrate how to repel insects like a capuchin monkey, catch a meal like a crocodile, or defend oneself like an armadillo. Beneath the irreverent tone, there’s ample information about the animals’ traits and behavior...adding up to a highly enjoyable mix of science and humor.
—Publishers Weekly, starred review
 

From the Publisher

★ 05/01/2015
Gr 2–5—Jenkins and Page team up once again for a glimpse into the animal kingdom. The authors outline 18 behaviors step by step, addressing readers directly as they explain how whales fish, wasps build nests, and grebes dance. Though the text is quite witty ("If you are a guy, start things off by offering a female grebe a gift of water plants"), some adults might wish for precautionary notes for the literal-minded, who might attempt to reenact instructions such as "Pop the millipede in your mouth." Impressive torn-and-cut paper collage artwork on white backgrounds work well with the conversational writing style. Students will be enthralled by the descriptions of an octopus disguising itself, a crocodile hunting for a meal, and a python swallowing a pig. The book includes single-page treatments and spreads of each behavior, with numbered directions laid out clockwise. Back matter provides additional information about the animals, such as their sizes and native environments. VERDICT Jenkins and Page present another fascinating, fun, and attractive look at the natural world.—Lynn Vanca, Freelance Librarian, Akron, OH

School Library Journal

2015-05-06
With tongues firmly in cheeks, a pair of animal admirers offers step-by-step instructions for engaging in some surprising animal behaviors. Tailorbirds, bowerbirds, and egrets, beavers, armadillos and crocodiles, octopuses, barn spiders, and ant lions—skillful animals from around the world are the subjects of Jenkins and Page's latest collaboration. With his customary cut-and-torn-paper images set on a plain white background, Jenkins illustrates the proper procedures for trapping fish as humpback whales do (with a bubble net), for warning other vervet monkeys of danger (with special cries for eagles, leopards, or snakes), and for cracking nuts as some crows do (let a car do it—but first you should learn to fly). Other possible activities include wooing bighorn sheep ewes with head butts, building nests out of chewed-up wood like paper wasps, and dancing over the water like western grebes. Swallowing a whole wild pig (after squeezing it to death as a python does) is the culmination. In the backmatter, a paragraph about each animal includes a thumbnail image and some further information about habitat, size, and behaviors. Youngsters who glory in learning animal facts will be thrilled; for those who enjoy pretending, there are inviting opportunities for imitation. Readers and listeners alike will eat this one up. (Informational picture book. 4-9)

Kirkus Reviews

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