Tails

Tails
by Matthew Van Fleet

Tails
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Book Summary Information

Author: Matthew Van Fleet
Edition: Board book
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2003-10-01
ISBN: 0152167730
Number of pages: 20
Reading Level: Baby-Preschool
Publisher: Red Wagon Books

Book Reviews of Tails

Book Review: "Finger-tickling fun for toddlers"...crushing tedium for their parents
Summary: 2 Stars

A well-meaning friend gave us this book, along with a bunch of others, and all I can say is that the other ones were infinitely better. It's true that our little girl (less than 2) is pretty keen on the book, but within a matter of months she had ripped out the waggling tails and I had grown very, very tired of the artist's limited repertoire of facial expressions, jokes, limp rhymes and cutesy-cuddly anthropomorphic animals. A sign of how much it compels our own toddler is that by now, she is only interested in the (admittedly mildly impressive) peacock. Elsewhere, you too will get bored and irritated by the sheer repetitiveness of it all, not to mention the actually kind of nauseating smell of the scratch & sniff skunk's tail.

There are a number of other books for very small kids that I would recommend more than this one. Judith Kerr's 'The Tiger Who Came To Tea', for example, is a truly strange and mysterious story that our girl returns to over and over again. 'Tails', however, is a one-joke book which tries to be educational but which is meanwhile relentlessly inaccurate from a zoological point of view - if you're going to show something about animals that doesn't actually feature them as characters, you could at least show them behaving in something like the ways they really behave, instead of having lions cheerfully hanging out with porcupines. Avoid.

Summary of Tails

Tails are irresistible to toddlers--though most are beyond the reach of small hands. But now there's reason for tail fans everywhere to rejoice: a colorful collection of tails created just for those eager toddlers to tug, pat, and even scratch and sniff!
Matthew Van Fleet's lovable menagerie features furry tails, spiny tails, shiny tails, and tails that wag--all designed to inspire and withstand hours of interactive play. While pulling tabs and opening gatefolds, those tail tuggers can also learn to count from one to ten. Tails is so full of action and fun that even parents will revel in repeated readings.

The most fascinating part of an animal, in the minds of many young children, is the tail. Not only do kids lack such appendages, they've been told that, as tempting as they are to yank on, tails are not to be touched. Fortunately, this charming, texture-rich board book (with patches of real fake fur!) is the next best thing. A vast menagerie of cartoonish critters play and scamper around the pages of Matthew Van Fleet's Tails sporting tails of all types: bumpy alligator tails, fuzzy tiger tails, and even slightly stinky scratch-and-sniff skunk tails. Children can pull the tabs to make some of the tails wag or swish. The story line is minimal, as animals lounge about playing with one another and generally having good-natured fun. Catchy rhyming verse ("Tails fluffy, tails stringy, scaled tails strong and clingy. Tails long. Tails stumpy, pulling tails makes snoozers grumpy") keeps the action moving along and encourages young readers eager to turn the page. Shoddy construction can often spell doom for lift-the-flap and touch-and-feel children's books but Tails is every bit as well-designed as it is well-written and illustrated. (Preschool) --John Moe

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