Who's Hiding Here?

A rhyming text explores animal camouflage, while die-cut pages reveal the animals hiding throughout the book.

Kindergarten-Grade 4 Stunning batik illustrations are the only excuse for this weak book on animal camouflage. Uninformative and uninspired rhymes ask ``Who's hiding here?'' The answers are given on the following page. The illustrations are generally clever enough to carry off the gamethe owl is hidden in the shadowy bark of a tree and is revealed when his eyes open and a bit of definition is added. The die-cuts are a gimmick to indicate where the animals are hiding (except for the star on the last page which has nothing to do with the cat), but they are seldom helpful in correctly guessing what kind of animal it is. Yoshi's aim is to explain animal camouflage, but her text, including ``notes for older readers,'' is too simplistic for grade school children, while her illustrations are too complicated for preschoolers. Also, these artistic renderings are neither as informative nor as useful as the excellent color photographs of real animals offered in Robert McClung's How Animals Hide (National Geographic, 1978). Karen K. Radtke, Milwaukee Public Library
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.