An amazing look at Earth's natural disasters as seen through numbers, facts, and stunning infographics from Caldecott Honor-winning author-illustrator Steve Jenkins!
What can happen in just a second, a minute, or an hour? How can we measure time? The flap of a vulture's wing. A crocodile's heartbeat. The weight of a baby blue whale. The life of a mayfly. These increments of time may sound a bit strange, but they are all fascinating ways in which we can think about time. But what exactly is time?
How many species are there across the globe? How much do all of the insects in the world collectively weigh? How far can animals travel?
Steve Jenkins answers these questions and many more with numbers, images, innovation, and authoritative science in his latest work of illustrated nonfiction. Jenkins layers his signature cut-paper illustrations alongside computer graphics and a text that is teeming with fresh, unexpected, and accurate zoological information ready for readers to easily devour. The level of scientific research paired with Jenkins' creativity and accessible infographics is unmatched and sure to wow fans old and new.
Discover some of the most fascinating aspects of our planet through astonishing numbers: the stretch of time from Earth's formation to the present, the misleading way the surface area of a continent can appear on a map, the angle of Earth's axis that creates the seasons, what percentage of Earth's land is covered in deserts or forests or cities, and so much more.
Discover some of the most fascinating aspects of dinosaurs through astonishing numbers: the varying sizes and shapes of dinosaurs, timelines of when they roamed the earth, charts comparing the fastest dinos with the speedy animals of today, maps of where these giant reptiles lived across the globe, and so much more.
What is it like to come face-to-face with the ten-foot-tall terror bird? Or stare into the mouth of the largest meat eater ever to walk the earth? Can you imagine a millipede that is more than six feet long, or a dinosaur smaller than a chicken? In this "actual size" look at the prehistoric world, which includes two dramatic gatefolds, you'll meet these awe-inspiring creatures, as well as many others.
What is it like to come face-to-face with the ten-foot-tall terror bird? Or stare into the mouth of the largest meat eater ever to walk the earth? Can you imagine a millipede that is more than six feet long, or a dinosaur smaller than a chicken? In this "actual size" look at the prehistoric world, which includes two dramatic gatefolds, you'll meet these awe-inspiring creatures, as well as many others.
Ever since Charles Darwin revealed his landmark ideas about evolution in 1859, new findings have confirmed, expanded, and refined his concepts. This ALSC Notable children's book brings together the pillars of evidence that support our understanding of evolution. In addition to stunning illustrations, more than fifty photographs capture natural marvels, including awe-inspiring fossils, life forms, and geological wonders. The result is a full and clear account of the monumental evidence supporting the modern view of evolution.
I See a Kookaburra! lets readers search for an oystercatcher, an elephant shrew, and a fierce snapping turtle in the places where they live. Learn how these animals and many others grow and thrive in very different environments.
Splitter, splat, splash! While they sleep, the forest fills with the sounds of the night creatures. Sloop! A silky anteater slurps up thousands of ants. Flap flap! A bat bites a fig. Hssss. A snake thrusts its tongue to taste the air. The air carries the taste of mouse. Everywhere night creatures with huge bright eyes slither and slurp through the darkness. Come explore the rain forest!
A downpour wakes the creatures of the rain forest. Howler monkeys roar and drink the water that drips from nearby leaves. Birds with rainbow beaks fly in search of shelter. A poison dart frog finds a tiny pool where her tadpoles can grow. In a place that gets twenty feet of rain a year, it is a way of life.
Every seed, big or small, needs sunlight, water, and an uncrowded place to put down roots. But how do seeds get to the perfect place to grow? This exploration of seed dispersal covers a wide range of seeds and the creatures that help them move, from a coconut seed floating on waves to an African grass seed rolled by a dung beetle, to a milkweed seed floating on the wind.
The three-toed sloth is topsy-turvy most of the time. The upside-down jellyfish rests on its back to feed. Skunks do stink-warning headstands and mallards upend in this colorful, interactive exploration of the hows and whys of upside-down animal behavior.
Animals smooth and spiky, fast and slow, hop and waddle through the two hundred plus pages of the Caldecott Honor artist Steve Jenkins's most impressive nonfiction offering yet. Sections such as "Animal Senses," "Animal Extremes," and "The Story of Life" burst with fascinating facts and infographics that will have trivia buffs breathlessly asking, "Do you know a termite queen can produce up to 30,000 eggs a day?"
What is the biggest land animal? What animal runs the fastest? Can elephants really eat more than 300 pounds of grass each day?
Dive into this fascinating book that introduces fourteen members of the animal kingdom who hold "world records" for their astonishing traits.
What do a cape buffalo, a king cobra, and a puffer fish have in common? They're all deadly! Deadliest! showcases some of the planet's most threatening creatures.
Speediest! will focus on the fastest members of the animal kingdom. Through illustrations, infographics, facts, and figures, readers will see how big each animal is compared to humans, where it lives on the globe, and just how quickly it can move!
Here, Steve Jenkins and Robin Page investigate sibling relationships throughout the animal kingdom. In this book you will learn that anteaters are always only children and nine-banded armadillos are always born as identical quadruplets. You will also learn that falcons play-hunt in the sky and that hyena cubs fight to the death. This is the perfect book for animal lovers young and old!
Trickiest! introduces readers to some of the slyest animals on the planet, and the award-winning author and illustrator Steve Jenkins is here to show you what earned them their reputation.
I have two big yellow eyes, soft, silky feathers, eight sharp claws, and an unlucky mouse in my pointy black beak. Who am I?
Who Am I? gives readers clues so they can guess which animal will be revealed in a beautiful, full-spread illustration when they turn the page. Playful nouns, adjectives, and verbs describe the characteristics and movements of each animal.
When it comes to wild animals, everyone knows that there are certain things you just don't do. It's clearly a bad idea to tease a tiger, pull a python's tail, or bother a black widow spider. But do you know how dangerous it can be to pet a platypus, collect a cone shell, or touch a tang fish? Some creatures have developed unusual ways of protecting themselves or catching prey, and this can make them unexpectedly hazardous to your health.
Half the earth's surface is covered by water more than a mile deep, but most of this watery world is a mystery to us. In fact, more people have stood on the surface of the moon than have visited the deepest spot in the ocean. Come along as we travel down, down, down, from the surface to the bottom of the sea. Along the way you can see jellyfish that flash like a neon sign, creatures with teeth so big, they can't close their mouths, and even a squid as long as a bus, which battles to the death with a sperm whale, the largest predator on earth. It'll be a journey you won't soon forget!
Coral reefs are some of the largest natural structures in the world, and they are created by tiny coral polyps no bigger than a grain of rice. This Let's-Read-and-Find-Out Science book introduces readers to the amazing world of the coral reefs and the many marine animals who lived there.
Crawling through the dirt, worms are hard at work. Worms help the fruit and vegetables we eat by loosening the soil and feeding the plants. Read and find out about these wiggling wonders!
Beetles squeak and beetles glow. Beetles stink, beetles sprint, beetles walk on water. With legs, antennae, horns, beautiful shells, knobs, and other oddities--what's not to like about beetles? The beetle world is vast: one out of every four living things on earth is a beetle. There are over 350,000 different species named so far and scientists suspect there may be as many as a million. From the goliath beetle that weighs one fourth of a pound to the nine inch long titan beetle, award-winning author-illustrator Steve Jenkins presents a fascinating array of these intriguing insects and the many amazing adaptations they have made to survive.
Mama built a little nest
inside a sturdy trunk.
She used her beak to tap-tap-tap
the perfect place to bunk.
There are so many different kinds of birds--and those birds build so many different kinds of nests to keep their babies cozy. With playful, bouncy rhyme, Jennifer Ward explores nests large and small, silky and cottony, muddy and twiggy--and all the birds that call them home!
Turkey vultures soar on the balmy air, looking for their next stinky feast. These birds don't hunt--they like their food to be already dead, and their eating habits serve a very important ecological role. Vultures are part of nature's clean-up crew.
Swoop and land.
Hitch and hop.
Shred a tree stump.
Chop, chip, chop!
Enter woodpecker world and get a bird's eye view of everyday life: hiding from hawks, feeding hungry chicks, and drilling holes to build homes. Woodpeckers are nature's home builders, creating holes that many other animals live in when the woopeckers move on.
Birds around the world have so many amazing kinds of beaks! There are short beaks and long beaks, straight beaks and curved beaks, flat beaks and even spoon-shaped beaks. But what do all of these beaks do?
Discover how beaks of different shapes and sizes are adapted to help birds sip nectar, make nests, battle for mates, and more!
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.
Turtles, birds, fish, beavers, and kangaroos are just like people--they need homes, and take up residence in unusual places. A simple main text introduces similarities between human and animal homes while sidebars detail the unique qualities of each animal and its home. Stylized yet realistic watercolor illustrations prove that nonfiction can be accurate and elegant, and readers of all ages will appreciate this layered narrative.
Perhaps you'll come across a den, / dark and deep and wide. / And it will make you wonder... / Who or what might be inside!
There are so many different kinds of dens that mother animals make for their babies, from desert burrows to snow caves to elaborate underground tunnels.
Through illustrations, infographics, facts, and figures, readers will see how big each animal is compared to humans, where it lives on the globe, and just how putrid it can be!
What would you do if something wanted to eat you? Walk on water? Stick out your tongue? Play dead? Animals in the wild use all kinds of methods to protect themselves from their enemies. Using dynamic and intricate cut-paper collages, Steve Jenkins explores the many fascinating and unique defense mechanisms creatures use to escape from danger.
The first day of life is different for every animal. Human newborns don't do much at all, but some animals hit the ground running. The Caldecott Honor-winning team Steve Jenkins and Robin Page apply their considerable talents to revealing how twenty two different species, from the emperor penguin to the Siberian tiger, adapt to that traumatic first few hours of life, with or without parental help. Jenkins's vividly colorful cut-paper illustrations are eye-poppingly three-dimensional and as exquisite as ever. While the text is short and sweet, an illustrated guide provides descriptions of the twenty two animals in the back. Fantastic!
Can an aardvark bark? No, but it can grunt. Lots of other animals grunt too...
Barks, grunts, squeals--animals make all kinds of sounds to communicate and express themselves. With a growling salamander and a whining porcupine, bellowing giraffes and laughing gorillas, this boisterous book is chock-full of fun and interesting facts and is sure to be a favorite of even the youngest animal enthusiasts.
Red, blue, yellow, green, orange, purple, pink--animals can be startlingly colorful. Why are they found in so many shades, tints, and hues? From the scarlet ibis to the blue-tongued skink, award-winning author/illustrator Steve Jenkins depicts a whole world of colorful animals in his signature style. Living Color explores a range of animals from old favorites like the pink flamingo to rare and fascinating creatures such as the long-wattled umbrella bird and the ringed caecilian. How dothe brilliant feathers, scales,shells, and skin of these animals help them survive? Find out in this strikingly beautiful book how animals use color to warn predators, signal friends, attract a mate, or hide from their enemies.
Why do some animals blend in to their surroundings? Why do certain creatures have fur, feathers, and features designed to look like the plants and rocks they live near?
In Look Again!, the most well-disguised animals on the planet are gathered together to showcase the range of ways animals try to avoid each other's attention, and why. This eye-catching book invites readers to seek out the astonishingly camouflaged animals hiding in plain sight--then reveals them on the next page!
How to Clean a Hippopotamus, a book about animal symbiosis, offers readers a close-up, step-by-step view of nature's fascinating partnerships. Find out why a mongoose comes running when a warthog lies down, how a crab and an iguana help each other out, why ravens follow wolves, and more. Witness the ingenious lifestyles of some of the world's most unusual animal partners in this book of curious biology, a symbiotic collaboration by Steve Jenkins and Robin Page.
How big is a crocodile? What about a tiger, or the world's largest spider? Can you imagine a tongue that is two feet long or an eye that's bigger than your head? Sometimes facts and figures don't tell the whole story. Sometimes you need to see things for yourself--at their actual size.
Each spread of Big and Little shows animals that are related to each other but vary greatly in size. All animals are illustrated on the same scale, so readers can compare them throughout the book.
Let's face it. Even as babies, we humans pay close attention to faces. Observing another person's features and expressions tells us whether they are happy, angry, excited, or sad. And when we look at an animal, it's hard not to imagine that its face is communicating human feelings. This isn't true, of course. Squinty eyes, an upturned mouth, or another odd expression is probably there because, in some way, it helps that animal survive. Packed with many cool facts and visuals on where certain animals live and what they eat, this book captures twenty-five humorous--and very true--explanations of why animals look the way they do in order to exist in this world.
Caldecott Honor winner Steve Jenkins presents a fascinating look at the bones of the human body as compared to the bones of animals, and shows them off! This book is far from skinny -- it's the definitive nonfiction title about human and animal bones, delivered with in-your-face accuracy and intrigue. In this visually driven volume, kids come face-to-face with some head-to-toe boney comparisons, many of them shown at actual size. Here you'll find the differences between a man's hand and that of a spider monkey; the great weight of an elephant's leg, paired with the feather-light femur of a stork; and rib-tickling info about snakes and sloths. How many bones are in the whole human body?
Eggs come in all shapes and sizes. The ostrich's is the largest, but some are so small, you need a microscope to spot them. Animals hide them and disguise them in smart and surprising ways, too. Some abandon their eggs, while others protect them fiercely and carry them wherever they go. There are as many kinds of eggs as there are animals that depend on them, because in the animal kingdom, the fight for survival begins with the simple, but extraordinary, egg.
A nose for digging? Ears for seeing? Eyes that squirt blood? Turn the page to find out which marvelous animal these attributes belong to. With six full spreads illustrated in cut-paper collage and an end glossary with even more fantastic facts, readers will learn about species of birds, amphibians, reptiles, fish, mammals, and arthropods.
In his eye-popping work of picture book nonfiction, Jenkins explains how for most animals, eyes are the most important source of information about the world in a biological sense.
The simplest eyes--clusters of light-sensitive cells--appeared more than one billion years ago, and provided a big survival advantage to the first creatures that had them. Since then, animals have evolved an amazing variety of eyes, along with often surprising ways to use them.
A red-lipped batfish waddles across the sea floor on its fins, searching for small sea creatures to eat. Other animals may fly or glide, or jet-propel themselves to get around. These creatures come equipped with legs, wings, or tentacles, and they often move from place to place in surprising ways. In the latest eye-catching escape into the kingdom of Animalia, Caldecott Honor-winning team Jenkins and Page show how animals roll, fly, walk, leap, climb, swim and even flip! This fascinating and fun illustrated nonfiction melds science, art, biology, and the environment together in a detailed and well-researched book about how animals move in our world today.
Are you a cat lover? A dog person? Either way, this book is for you! Read about how your favorite companion came to be a pet and how its body works. Then, flip the book over and find out about the other kind.
Why did the chicken cross the road? To follow you home! Learn all about a not-so-basic bird in this delightful nonfiction picture book.
What's that? A chicken followed you home? Now what do you do?
Celebrated author-illustrator Robin Page leads a step-by-step, question-and-answer-style journey through the world of chickens. Along the way you'll explore different breeds, discover different types of coops, and learn everything there is to know about chicken reproduction and hatching.
What does it take to be top dog? In this illustrated exploration of the animal kingdom, Caldecott Honor winner Steve Jenkins introduces readers to some of the most powerful predators in history, from the Tyrannosaurus Rex to the African Siberian Tiger.
Long legs, sticky tongues, big round eyes, and other dazzling features—what's not to love about frogs?
In this magnificently illustrated picture book, Caldecott Honor–winning team Steve Jenkins and Robin Page explore one of the world's most diverse—and most threatened—animals. With more than 5,000 different frog species on the planet, in every color of the rainbow and a vast number of vivid patterns, no creatures are more fascinating to learn about or look at. Jenkins and Page present a stunning array of these intriguing amphibians and the many amazing adaptations they have made to survive.
Sometimes an animal wants to be noticed. It might blow itself up like a balloon, perform a dance, or show off its brightly colored feathers, skin, or scales. Perhaps it pretends to be a different kind of animal altogether. In this book you can find out how—and why—so many animals say, “Look at Me!”