Sandy Feet! Whose Feet?: Footprints at the Shore

by Susan Wood, Steliyana Doneva (Illustrator)

Overview

When a family spends a day at the beach, the children investigate various footprints to see what type of creatures live along the shoreline. Rhyming text turns a sandy beach into an outdoor classroom. The tracks and habits of local wildlife, including hopping sandpipers, scuttling crabs, and burrowing turtles, are identified and explained for young ecology detectives. Even Daddy's feet make an appearance! And at day's end, it's time for tired feet to make their way home. STEM-based back matter includes information on how clues like footprints can identify the type of wildlife inhabiting any given habitat.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781585364091
Publisher:	Sleeping Bear Press
Publication date:	04/15/2019
Pages:	32
Product dimensions:	10.10(w) x 10.20(h) x 0.40(d)
Lexile:	440L (what's this?)
Age Range:	6 - 7 Years

Editorial Reviews

2019-02-17

A family spends a day at the beach observing various creatures' prints in the sand.

Children and families of various skin tones and hair textures play on the beach as the main characters, a mother and father, a boy and a girl, all with brown skin, arrive, the children running toward the water. In spare, mostly rhyming verses, the text introduces "sandy feet" and "digging feet" and "wading feet" alongside small creatures as the children encounter them on the beach. A wet dog, a sandpiper, a scuttling crab, a sea gull. Each full-bleed illustration features motion—spraying water and creatures in action, with hints on each spread of the creature to be featured on the next. As the sun goes down, the family packs up and walks away from the water, tired out. The final spread shows a collection of prints featured throughout the book. Endnotes encourage readers to be "ecology detectives" and observe prints in nature, then provide information about the animals in the book. The calming beach colors create nostalgia for beach lovers, and the changing perspective of each spread adds interest for the duration of the book.

More substantive than some beach-themed books, this one is engaging enough and notable due to the spotlight on brown children. (Picture book. 3-7)

Kirkus Reviews