A great book on bones and what they do! Also is a fun way to talk about animals and recognize their bone structure. Has question and answering that includes "What If" statements to allow students to comprehend information in the book and engage kids on reading! ( )

Summary:
It about comparing humans to other vertebrates. It points out the similarities and differences by imagining how we'd look with added bones in our spine. It shows many different imaginary ways we could look if we had the other bones.

Personal Reaction:
Thought the book was so cute. It was a very neat way to understand the bone structures in different things. It was a very entertaining book to read.

Classroom Extension Ideas:
1. Have the students use tooth picks and pipe cleaners and make their own version.
2. Have them draw a picture of what they would look like if they added more bone structure. ( )

This book compares animal skeletons and why they are shaped certain ways. It keeps kids interested by making jokes and keeping kids guessing. ( )

All kinds of vertebrates. ( )

This very clever and fun book shows how different living creatures are similar and different by posing questions on one side of a page that are answered on its reverse. For example, she asks, "What kind of animal would you be if your finger bones grew so long that they reached your feet?"

On the next page, we discover the answer.

Or, “What if you didn’t have any arm or leg bones? What kind of animal would you be if you had just a skull, vertebrae, and ribs?” Or: “Now let’s keep all of your bones but change the size of some of them. What kind of animal would you be if you had really big vertebrae in your neck?”

Amusing and imaginative illustrations by the pseudonymous T.S. Spookytooth are colorful and funny and just right for kids. For each “what if” he shows little boys and girls with bodies distorted by the proposed changes.

My favorite is this one: Next to one puddle of a boy the author asks, “Could you be an animal if you didn’t have any bones at all?” (“Yes!” is the answer: “Many animals don’t have bones. They’re called invertebrates.”)

The questions are hugely intriguing and will delight children, stimulating their imaginations and teaching them something at the same time.

Highly recommended!

Evaluation: The author, a veterinarian and assistant professor of biology in Boston, teaches classes on plants and animals for kids. It is clear she knows what kids find entertaining. (I.e., kids and husbands, one of whom, who shall not be named herein, insisted on going through the whole book and guessing the answers for each page.) This is another book I could hardly pull away from the young readers in our lives, who in addition to reading it, felt the need to act out each possibility. ( )