Look at the cover before you buy this one. It says Scholastic Reader, Level 2, and that is not decoration on the end of the title. It is a different product.
The rest of Sandra Markle's series are picture books. Big pages, the real animal facing a cartoon of a child wearing the part, meant to be read aloud to a child on your knee. This one takes the same premise and rebuilds it as an early reader, sized and worded for a child who is starting to get through a book alone. Same author, same idea, same $4.99, different object in your hand.
Two of the ones we carry from this series are in the reader format. Eyes is one. The T. Rex teeth one is the other. Everything else is a picture book. Nobody puts that on a product page in words a tired parent will catch at eleven at night, so I am putting it here.
The science it actually teaches
Level 2 means controlled vocabulary and short sentences, and that costs content. There is less text per animal here than in the picture books and the explanations stop sooner. What survives is still good.
The chameleon is the standout. Each eye moves on its own, so the animal can watch two directions at the same time, and then both eyes swing forward together when it needs to work out how far away something is. Two different ways of seeing in one head. A child can act that out on the kitchen floor with their hands over their eyes, and several will.
The colossal squid is the other one worth the money. Its eyes are the largest known on any animal, and they are that size because the water it lives in has almost no sunlight in it. The book puts it as eyes that shine in the dark. Big eyes in a dark place is straight cause and effect, and a six-year-old can hold it.
Underneath both is the series idea again: an eye is built for the light it lives in and the job it has to do.
The child it lands with
Not the animal-obsessed one. That child wants the picture books, which carry more.
This is for the child who has just started getting through words alone and needs something they actually want to finish. That is the whole case for this edition, and it is a strong one. A new reader will not stay with an invented story about a dog on a mat, but will stay right to the end for a squid whose eyes are the size of dinner plates. Nonfiction is badly underrated as early reading practice, and this is a clean example of why.
If your child is not reading independently yet, this is the wrong one in the series to hand them.
One place to stop and talk
Here is the thing the reader format did not have room for, and it is the best idea in the whole subject.
Put the book down and go find two faces. A cat, a dog, a picture of an owl: eyes in the front. A rabbit, a horse, a chicken, a cow: eyes on the sides of the head. Then ask your child which of those two groups gets eaten.
Eyes in front are for measuring distance, which is what you need when you are chasing something. Eyes on the sides see almost the whole way around, which is what you need when something is chasing you. It costs ninety seconds and your child will apply it to every animal they meet for the rest of their life.
Then let them look at your face and work out which group we are in.
What to know going in
The caution here is not about content. It is gentle, nothing is frightening, and the squid does not eat anybody on the page. The caution is that the reading level really is different from the rest of the series and the listing does not shout about it. A parent buying the fifth book for a four-year-old lap-reader gets a thinner, plainer book than the four already on the shelf and concludes the series went downhill. It did not. This one is built for a different moment, and if you buy it for the wrong moment it will disappoint you through no fault of its own.
Where to get it
It is $4.99 at What If You Had Animal Eyes!?, the same price as the picture books, which is worth knowing, because you are getting less text for the money and you should be buying the format on purpose. If reading practice is the goal, get this one and the T. Rex teeth reader together and leave the picture books for later. If reading aloud is the goal, do the exact opposite. Both roads run through the Stealth Science shelf.
If your child liked this one
Books we have written about that sit close to this one, by reading level and by subject.
T. Rex Teeth: How Anyone Knows What a Dinosaur Bit
What If You Had T. Rex Teeth?: And Other Dinosaur Parts (Scholastic Reader, Level 2) by Sandra Markle
Grade K to 3
Animal Scales: Fur, Feathers and the Same Five Jobs
What If You Had Animal Scales!? or Other Animal Coats? by Sandra Markle
Grade K to 3
Aaron Slater and the Sneaky Snake: Who Gets to Decide
Aaron Slater and the Sneaky Snake: The Questioneers Chapter Book #6 by Andrea Beaty
Grade 1 to 4
Browse every book we have written about by age, by kind of book and by subject: Find the right book for your child. Or see the whole Stealth Science shelf.
