A cheetah cannot pull its claws all the way in. They stay out, they dig into the ground, and that is a large part of why the animal can turn at speed instead of sliding off its own line.
That is on a page in this book, beside a photograph of the animal and a drawing of a child with cheetah feet, and it is better science than most books at this price get anywhere near. Same series and same shape as the rest of Sandra Markle's set: one body part, one animal per spread, a joke on one side and the real thing on the other. Feet is the one I would put first.
The science it actually teaches
Feet is the best of these because a foot is a machine you can watch working.
The cheetah is claws as running spikes. Not weapons, not decoration. Traction.
The mountain goat is the spread adults learn something from. That hoof is two toes that spread apart when the animal lands and pull back together on rock. Around the outside is a hard rim that catches an edge. Inside it is a soft pad that grips like a rubber sole. It is a climbing shoe, and nobody designed it.
The fly is the one your child will not stop talking about. The pads on its feet carry tiny hairs and a thin film of fluid, and between them they hold a whole animal upside down on your ceiling.
Three different problems and three different answers, and in every case you can put a finger on the part doing the work. That is exactly what the ears book and the eyes book cannot do, and it is why this is the one to own if you only own one.
The store copy also promises a photograph of each real animal next to the cartoon, and that matters more than it sounds. Half of every spread is a gag. The other half is the actual animal, and a child needs both halves before they will believe any of it.
The child it lands with
Three to eight. Read it to the young end, hand it to the older end and walk away.
The one who gets the most out of it is the child who takes things apart. This book pays that child back, because it sends them straight outside to a real foot, and real feet are everywhere.
One place to stop and talk
Do not talk. Go and look.
After the goat, get your child to stand on tiptoe on the edge of a step and hold it there. That is roughly what a goat's foot is doing all day, except the goat has a hard rim and a rubber pad and never has to think about it.
Then find three feet in your own house. The dog, if you have one: soft pads, blunt claws, built to cover distance. A bird's foot at the feeder: three toes forward and one back, built to lock around a branch. Your child's own foot: flat, wide, almost no grip, built to walk a very long way on flat ground and for not much else.
Ask which of those three would be worst on a rock face, and make them say why. That is a real comparison, off real animals, done in your kitchen, and a $4.99 paperback is what made it possible.
What to know going in
Nothing frightening and nothing sad in it. The one thing to hold in mind is that every spread pairs a real photograph with a cartoon of a child wearing that animal's part, and a young or very literal child can take the cartoon at face value. One sentence from you sorts that out. The fly spread also puts feet and food into the same thought, which some children find hilarious and a few find revolting, and either reaction means it landed.
Where to get it
It is $4.99 at What If You Had Animal Feet?. Of the titles from this series on our Stealth Science shelf, this is the one to buy first, because the mechanisms are visible and your child can go and check every one of them against a living animal. Buy a second only when your child asks for it by name. These books repeat on purpose, and the fourth one teaches almost nothing the first did not.
If your child liked this one
Books we have written about that sit close to this one, by reading level and by subject.
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
Animal Teeth: Which What If You Had Book to Buy First
What If You Had Animal Teeth? by Sandra Markle
Grade K to 3
Chameleons Are Cool: The Camouflage Myth, Corrected
Chameleons Are Cool: Read and Wonder by Martin Jenkins
Grade K to 3
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.
