Who Was Here?: Discovering Wild Animal Tracks

"Even the very young can identify animal tracks when it's made this much fun. Rhyming couplets that give clues to an animal's identity and accompany illustrations of life-size (but admittedly not always realistically spaced) tracks and a few habitat clues encourage children to guess who made the print. 'Round footprints left by two-toed feet / pressed into the sand in the desert heat. / This animal lives without water for days, / traveling under scorching sun rays.' Snaking (literally) between the prints is a long, S-shaped line. The turn of the page reveals the tracks' makers--'A camel and a snake!'--and a paragraph of information about these animals (dromedary camels and horned vipers) follows. Other featured animals include black bear, gray wolves, moose, kangaroos, hippos, cattle egrets, beavers and a jaguar. Posada's illustrations give great clues, and the answer pages mostly show both close-ups of the animals and at least one full-body image against the animals' habitat. Backmatter encourages readers to use all the clues a track gives to identify the animal: number of toes, whether claws are visible or not, size of the track, how deeply impressed the track is, how far apart they're spaced, etc. Tracks of nonfeatured animals in the background of the page challenge readers. The only thing that's missing is an instructional note about using paper cups and plaster of Paris to cast found tracks. Naturalists will be enthralled." --Kirkus Reviews

"Ten different animals from around the world are covered in this informational picture book. Young children will be entertained and will enthusiastically want to guess the animal(s) being described in rhyming text. The clues are fairly simple to figure out but not too easy, and give young listeners the chance to figure out what they know. The colorful watercolor and collage illustrations add a lot of pizazz to this book. This would make a good addition to collections that need to material for animal units in the primary grades. [Editor's Note: Available in e-book format.] Recommended."―Library Media Connection

"Actual-size illustrations of animal tracks around the world join rhymes that point to the animals' identities: 'A long-toed jumper in the arid Outback/ hopped through the dry brush and left this track.... Who was here?' While the verse offers so many clues that guessing the animals won't prove too difficult for many readers, the revelation of the animals on the following pages can still hold some surprises--a combination of huge footprints paired with V-shaped marks in the mud were left by 'a hippo and an egret, ' while two-toed prints and long curving marks are indicative of a camel and a snake. Posada's lush watercolor-and-collage illustrations gracefully enhance this guess-the-animal book." --Publishers Weekly