Rock? Plant? Animal?: How Nature Keeps Us Guessing

Ages 4 to 8, Grades 4 And Up

An interactive guessing game featuring nature’s most unusual adaptations and characteristics Can you tell the difference between a rock, a plant, and an animal? While it might sound simple, the vast diversity of life on earth can throw us some serious curveballs! Sometimes, what looks like a plant is actually an animal. Other times, what looks like an animal is actually a plant! Even things that look like living creatures can turn out to be unique rocks.Young readers are encouraged to challenge their pre-existing ideas about the natural world in this engaging nonfiction book set up as a scientific guessing game, filled with lively illustrations and fun facts.Each spread features a realistic illustration of either a puzzling critter, a perplexing plant, or a special stone. Every picture is accompanied by a simple prompt: rock, plant, or animal? The answer is revealed by turning the page to discover a beautifully detailed scene and a brief description of the “species.” Even for the most esteemed naturalists, the answers are hard to believe! Rock? Plant? Animal? lets its readers be detectives, encouraging curiosity and embracing surprise.

About the Author

ETTA KANER writes for both children and educators. Many of her books have won awards including the Silver Birch Award, the Henry Bergh Award, the Animal Behaviour Society Award, the Science Writers and Communicators of Canada Award, the Scientific American Young Readers Book Award, and the Science in Society Book Award. Etta lives in Toronto, Ontario, where she enjoys learning about nature.BRITTANY LANE is a children's book illustrator and fine artist currently based in Stouffville, Ontario. She worked as a wildlife biologist for a decade, before turning to visual storytelling as a way to share her passion for and understanding of nature and wildlife with others. Rock? Plant? Animal? is her first children's book.