Smile If You're Human

Rating:
Summary: Great story, easy to understand and colorful pictures
Review: My 3 year old enjoyed this book very much. It shows the difference between some of the zoo animals and humans. She knows now that penguins have webbed feet and wings, etc. We enjoyed reading it and enjoyed the colorful pictures.

Rating:
Summary: Smile
Review: This is a great book for the young children. The words are large and there are few to a page, which makes it easier for the children to memorize. It is about aliens who come down to earth to find a human. However instead of landing in a town the aliens land in a zoo, and they go from animal to animal thinking each one is a human at first but learning that they are not. At the end they aliens think that they have found a human and they take a picture...however is it really a human. The story is light hearted. I like this story because it shows the importance of description and communication, sense the aliens didn't know enough about humans, they thought that the animals were humans. The author did a great job at introducing the different kinds of animals in a zoo.

Rating:
Summary: Funny twist on a typical picture book format
Review: We're all familiar with picture books in which a character is searching for family or identity based on comparing characteristics of the creatures he/she meets against his/her own features. Well, in this book, a family of aliens has touched down on earth, in a zoo, and they are seeking an example of human life. They must have come on an off-day because there aren't any humans at the zoo, but there are lots of animals. The alien mom compares each animal against the description of humans in her book and finds that none quite fit the bill . . . until the end of the book. The payoff is that they identify a smiling gorilla as a human. The picture is a funny one, and the text concludes that they have discovered that humans have the greatest smiles (based on the toothy grin of the gorilla). The book is fun to read and the illustrations are funny. I would recommend it for kindergarten-age kids.