Eva reviews: “Crinkleroot’s Book of Animal Tracking”

Crinkleroot’s Book of Animal Tracking by Jim Arnosky

(previously published as Crinkleroot’s Book of Animal Tracks and Wildlife Signs)

The publisher says… Can you find the signs that tell about raccoons, deer, rabbits, foxes, otters, and other animals in the wild? Crinkleroot can — and he’s eager to share his secrets! His lively introduction to the art of animal tracking is packed with solid, useful information– including his own wildlife charts. Why, Crinkleroot even knows how to find an owl in the daytime — and he wants you to be able to find one, too. Happy tracking.

Eva says… O.K., now THIS is MY kind of book! Great facts AND a story! I mean, it’s got LOTS of facts about all these animals. And what it’s mainly about is, how you find these guys in the woods by looking at their FOOTPRINTS. Because their feet are all different and so their footprints are all different too. And when you look, those footprints GO all different places that tell you about where they live and what they eat and where they hide and even who else is following them. All from FOOTPRINTS. It’s like those footprints even tell a STORY. Wow.

What I like about this one is that each animal gets his own page with lots of facts AND drawings on it. And that’s because the guy who wrote this one is a good writer PLUS he’s a real expert about animals. He’s done a LOT of books about animals. The ones I’ve read are about turkeys (All About Turkeys) and raccoons (Raccoon On His Own) and armadillos (Armadillo’s Orange) and bears (Every Autumn Comes The Bear). The armadillo and raccoon ones were stories, but the other ones were kind of stories and kind of fact books.

So this guy can do both kinds. Now THAT’S talented.

And you know what the best part is? He’s from VERMONT! And that’s good because if he’s from Vermont, then he must have seen all these animals HERE, right? Which means I can see them, too. Including FOXES. So that makes this book EXTRA useful!

I might need to buy this one because you can only renew a library book one time and then you have to take it back and wait to get it again. And I want to keep looking at this one.

Oh, and one other thing I like is, it’s not super easy. I like some easy books with pictures when they’re stories, but when they make fact books too easy, that means they’re not telling you enough, which means they’re MISSING FACTS. And that’s not good.

But this guy doesn’t miss anything. It’s informative and USEFUL.

So this is a real good one! YEAH!