Stripes of All Types
While a skunk makes an unusual cover girl, a striking jacket illustration of a skunk invites readers to look inside this picture book on striped animals. Each page or double-page spread portrays one or more animals in an acrylic painting with clean lines; bold, simplified shapes; and some eye-catching color combinations. With lines such as “Propped on a log, / poised on a leaf. / Scaling a ridge / and scouting a reef,” short rhymed couplets string the illustrations together in a pleasant way but otherwise seem to have little purpose. The passage quoted above (spanning six pages) accompanies images of a frog, a butterfly, a skunk, and several fish. The animals are identified only in an appended section that reproduces the paintings in miniature and provides a bit of information related to each creature’s stripes. A challenging matching game is also appended. This attractive picture book, one of the few to focus on stripes in nature, offers images that a motivated teacher could use for discussion. Preschool-Grade 1. --Carolyn Phelan