I love that this book teaches the reader howto use clues to identify different tracks. This book really encourages the reader to expand their thinking while reading page by page. ( )

This illustated picture book aims at getting children interested in nature by helping them become nature detectives. By primarilly focusing on footprints, kids are introduced into how naturalists use clues rather than visual sightings to determine the presence of nature in an area. Children are tasked to determine whether the dog or the cat drank from a bowl of milk or the dog food bowl (as is common in many houses, the cat ate the dog food while the dog drank milk) or what animals were on a river bank.

Though aimed at younger readers, I present this book to most elementary aged students. I read aloud stopping to let the kids try to answer the riddles, and after they are done, I take them to a sand box where I have put animal tracks and allow them to guess what animals made the tracks. So far students seem to enjoy the challenge of being nature detectives and this book is a nice introduction to animal tracking. ( )

This book lets you as the reader be the detective and find out what animals made the tracks in the snow, sand, mud...etc... This book would be great for asking open ended questions to students. ( )

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