Rainforest

Gr 3–6—The attention-grabbing orange bill of the Toco Toucan splashes across the cover of this introduction to life in the rain forest. Inside the book, the color palette softens and the artwork contains the textured look of woodblock illustrations. Lyrical sentence fragments introduce animals, birds, and insects in their forest setting. Such memorable lines as "tiny foragers transport their treasure" (describing a column of leafcutter ants) give life to their toils. Quiet scarlet ibises are reflected standing in shallow water, and open-mouthed howler monkeys' voices seem to echo off the pages. The background colors change with each spread—outsize green leaves frame a stalking jaguar and black bats swoop on a purple-paged twilight. The last two pages offer identification and brief description of the six mammals, four reptiles, three birds, one fish, and one insect.