What Do You Do With a Tail Like This? by Steve Jenkins and Robin Page

Jenkins, Steve and Robin Page. What Do You Do With a Tail Like This?. New York, New York, Houghton Mifflin Company, 2003.

A fun-filled nonfiction and the winner of the Caldecott Honor, which is very informative on animals and how they use their different senses; sight, smell, touch, hear, and taste. This was an entertaining book, because before the reader is exposed the actual animal, the only things shown are noses, eyes, mouths, etc; along with being educating, it also becomes a guessing game. The authors did a very good job in making this educational book enjoyable. The illustrations in this book are cut-out pictures and made into a kind of collage. The cut-outs look as though they have different textures and make the reader want to touch the animals shown. There is a large variety of different animals that are used to help the reader to understand what their noses, ears, feet, eyes, mouths, and tails are used for. The pictures alone would not be able to bring the reader knowledge about the animals because all the reader would see would be an animal, but how do they use their senses? The text in this book is very important in telling the reader what they need to know. Although the pictures in this book may seem a bit simple, it had to have taken time to get the “textures” of the animals just right, because the feel of every animal is different and the readers can all sense that from seeing the pictures. At the end of the book, it showed all of the animals that were mentioned and had more information on them so that the readers would have a better understanding of the different animals.

other sources:
Cullinan, Bernice, and Lee Galda. Literature and the Child. 5th ed. Wadsworth, 2002

Math Curse by Jon Scieszka Illustrated by Lane smith

Scieszka, Jon, and Lane Smith. Math Curse. New York: Penguin Group, 1995.


In Math Curse, a girl is told by her teacher that everything could be seen as a math problem. The narrator engages the audience in one hilarious story after another of how she encounters math in her everyday life. She introduces many playful problems such as, “Estimate how many M&Ms you would eat if you had to measure the Mississippi River with M&Ms”(np).

The unique style in which the text and illustrations are presented further reinforce the intriguing nature of the book. The collage-like illustrations are big, bold, eye-catching and colorful. The font varies in size, capitalization and even position on the page. For example, on one page, the text acts as a border; the book has to be turned in order to read the words on each side. Variation in text guides the way the book is read and helps to maximize the humor. It emphasizes funny points such as, “I am now a raving math lunatic”(np).

The dedication page, price label, age group, list of other books the author wrote, etc. also incorporate the mathematical playfulness presented throughout the book and reinforce that math is everywhere. For example, a Venn diagram illustrates which books the illustrator and author have done. To top it off, the book presents answers to even the most ridiculous problems on the back cover.

I found many sources online, including these, which incorporate the reading of “Math Curse” into a lesson plan: http://www.theteacherscorner.net/lesson-plans/math/storyproblems/mathcurse.htm and http://www.k-state.edu/smartbooks/Lesson017.html