A chinchilla does not get fleas. Not because it is clean, but because its fur grows so densely that there is no route down to the skin. There is nowhere for a flea to stand.
That fact is one spread in this book, printed opposite a cartoon of a child who never needs bug spray again, and it is a fair sample of the whole thing. Sandra Markle's series takes one body part, gives each animal a spread, and puts the real animal on one side and a drawing of a child wearing the same equipment on the other. A row of them sits on our shelf. This is the one that is not quite like the rest, and the difference is worth five dollars on its own.
The science it actually teaches
Every other book in the series varies one thing. Feet, ears, eyes, tails, teeth. Different animals, same organ, spread after spread. This one puts scales next to feathers next to fur, and those are three genuinely different materials, which quietly changes what your child walks away with.
Once they are lined up, the question stops being what does this animal have and turns into what is a covering for. That answer is a short list, and it is the same list for every animal alive. Hold heat in, or get rid of it. Keep water on the right side of the skin. Stop things biting. Move through water or air with less fight. Say something to another animal without making a sound.
The hammerhead is the drag one. Shark skin is covered in tiny tooth-shaped scales that lie like roof tiles and smooth the water running over the body, which is why the skin feels like sandpaper one way and slick the other, and why swimsuit makers spent years trying to copy it. The honeybee is the carrying one. Bee hairs are branched instead of smooth, so pollen catches in them and rides along to the next flower, which is the reason we have apples. The chinchilla is the density one, and that fur is so thick the animal cannot get properly wet or properly dry, which is why chinchillas bathe in dust rather than water.
Then the book turns back to your child's own skin, which is a covering like the rest of them, and the only one on the list that repairs itself.
Be clear about the depth, because it applies to every book in this series. A paragraph an animal is a paragraph an animal. Nobody finishes this book understanding how a feather is built. What it does instead is put three answers to the same problem on consecutive pages, and a five year old who has met scales, feathers and fur that way has been handed a real sorting idea without anyone using a word they would have to look up.
The child it lands with
The child this lands hardest on already owns one of the others. That is the honest answer and it is not the one a store usually gives. The comparison needs something to compare against, and the fastest way to make this book work is to read it two weeks after Animal Feet or Animal Teeth, when the format is familiar enough that a child can feel this one behaving differently.
Cold on its own it still reads fine for four to seven, out loud, in about ten minutes.
It is also a quietly good book for a child who is frightened of a particular animal, because a bee doing a job is a smaller thing than a bee.
One place to stop and talk
Close the book after the chinchilla and go find three things people in your house wear. A raincoat, a wool sweater, a swimsuit. Ask which animal problem each one solves. The raincoat is the water one. The sweater is the heat one. The swimsuit is the drag one, which is why the serious ones are so tight and so unpleasant to get into.
Then ask the better half of the question. Which of the five jobs do our clothes not do at all? We have nothing that stops something biting us, which is why we buy bug spray, and nothing that says anything to another animal without a sound, which is why we shout. Six year olds find that funny, and funny is what gets remembered.
What to know going in
This is a gentle book. The things worth flagging are practical rather than emotional, and there are three.
The title is the first one. On a shelf it reads like two books glued together, and a child who picks it up wanting scales gets mostly fur and feathers. If yours asked for the reptile book, this is not the reptile book, and that disappointment is avoidable by saying so before you hand it over.
The photographs are the second. This series prints them large and close, and one of these animals is a honeybee. A child who is genuinely afraid of insects is going to meet one at full page size with no warning, on your lap. Worth a look yourself first.
The third is the depth again, and it costs us a sale every time we say it. If you are buying this as your covering and adaptation unit for the year, it is not one. Nothing that costs five dollars and takes ten minutes is.
Where to get it
$4.99 for What If You Had Animal Scales!? or Other Animal Coats?, and the timing advice runs opposite to the usual. Do not start the series here. Start with Animal Teeth or Animal Feet, and come to this one second or third, once your child knows the shape of the joke well enough to notice this book is doing something the others are not. The rest of them sit on the Stealth Science shelf. If I had to keep one book out of this series and lose the rest, this is the one I would keep.
If your child liked this one
Books we have written about that sit close to this one, by reading level and by subject.
What If You Had an Animal Tail? The Best Page Is Last
What If You Had an Animal Tail? 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
Over and Under the Pond: Why You Cannot See In
Over and Under the Pond: (Environment and Ecology Books for Kids, Nature Books, Children's Oceanography Books, by Kate Messner
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.
