Curious George
adapted by Julie Tibbott
This is one of those \”modern\” Curious George books based on the tv series. I suspect the pictures are stills straight from the computer-generated animation; they have that too-smooth style that doesn\’t really appeal to me. But my kid loves Curious George and the stories are always fun and educational, so I overlook my nitpickiness on aesthetics here once again, and just enjoy it.
George, the ever-curious monkey, is going about with a camera taking pictures of animals. His friend Bill helps him look for a fawn to photograph, and George learns how to find and identify animal tracks. He finds some tracks that puzzle him, tries to guess what they are from, and decides it was a dinosaur. George is frightened at the idea of a dinosaur walking around, but he follows the tracks and finds out who really made them; quite a surprise! In addition to having a fun story that teaches some things about wildlife and basics of logical thinking (making a guess and testing a theory), the book also has a few pages in the back that give kids activities to match animals to their tracks, and how to make a casting of tracks you find yourself. I might just try that with my older daughter; we often find deer tracks in the nature park nearby, and once I thought I saw the footprints of a raccoon.
Rating: 3/5 …….. 24 pages, 2011