Look Behind! (by Heather Lynn Miller, Lola M. Schaefer)

Every animal has a rear end. Besides being used for the excretory function, most have a secondary use: sitting, insulating, glowing, protecting, communicating, and so on. Some animals also use their skin, feathers, and exoskeletons for those same purposes, and a discussion of those is thrown in here and there. Thus we have Blubber Butt (Polar Bear), Invisible Butt (walking stick), Juicy Butt (Salamander), and Noisy Butt (Cow), to name a few. From A to Z, animals in this book are named for the way they use their behinds, and their skin and skeletons, and each unique function is explained in three or four simple, scientific sentences.

Though LOOK BEHIND! is a book mostly about butts, it is far from being bawdy. Lola Schaefer, and her co-author Heather Lynn Miller, have chosen a topic of interest to every young kid, and used it to impart some very intriguing scientific facts that few people know. On top of that, combining the crazy format of an alphabet book with some rather silly cartoon-like illustrations and filling them out with sentences that plainly explain actual functions and reasons could be called pure genius.

This is not Schaefer's first book of intriguing science facts for kids, though it may be the silliest. She has written many, including Arrowhawk, which was selected as a 2005 Outstanding Science Trade Book for Students K-12.

Author: Heather Lynn Miller, Lola M. Schaefer
Illustrator: Jane Manning
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Publication date: March 11, 2008
Number of pages: 32
Hardcover price: $16.99
Read Aloud: 4
Read Alone: 8