Chameleons Are Cool (by Martin Jenkins)

You have to hand it to Martin Jenkins for creating a natural-science book that can be successfully deployed with preschoolers. The text emphasizes chameleon facts that grab kids' interest -- changing colors, wild rotating eyes, and just plain wild noses, their grumpiness, and their slow approach, followed by a lightning-quick zap of their quarry -- while the illustrations are as Technicolor bright as the tropics.

One slight drawback is Jenkins' occasional pandering to readers, starting with "Chameleons are cool." The inclusion of a young boy in the artwork, in aviator glasses and with his hat on backward, also seems a bit obvious. When this book was read to a library class of 5-year-olds, they immediately began to act grumpy and stick their tongues out at one another. Obviously, chameleons and 5-year-olds share much in common.