Book Review: Little Skink's Tail, by Janet Halfmann

Little Skink’s Tail
By Janet Halfmann
Illustrated by Laurie Allen Klein
Sylvian Dell Publishing
ISBN: 978-0-9768823-8-1
Copyright 2007
Hardcover, 32 pages, $15.95
Ages 4-8

One day Little Skink, a blue-tailed young lizard, is basking on a big rock in the morning sun. Leaping to the floor, she begins to gobble up her breakfast, which consists of yummy-smelling ants, when suddenly a big crow appears and attacks. Luckily, Little Skink manages to escape. There’s only one problem: her tail is gone! Where did her bright blue tail go? Did the crow snap it off? What will Little Skink do now, without her wiggling, waggling tail?

She’s happy to be alive, but sad at having lost her tail. She can’t get her lost tail off her mind, so she begins to imagine how she would look with other animals’ tails. How would she look with a rabbit’s tail?
No, too ‘puffy-fluffy’. What about with a porcupine’s? No, too ‘sticky-prickly.’ And so on and so forth with the different forest creatures. Will Little Skink’s tail ever grow back?

This is a colorful, engaging, beautifully illustrated book that teaches children about animals and their tails. At the end of the book there are activities for ‘Creative Minds’—a footprint map and a game for matching different types of tails with their corresponding animals.