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This was one of my favorite books to have my dad read to my brother and me as a bedtime story when we were young. Although this is an old book (it was published in 1964), I still enjoyed reading it and I think it is a great informational text. The first reason I liked this book is because of the quality and appropriateness of information it presented to readers. It discussed interesting facts about animals, like how opossums play dead to stay safe, but in audience-appropriate language and sentence structure. It would be easy for readers to understand the information in this text, while it would also engage them because it features 19 interesting animals. The second reason I liked this book is because of the engaging Table of Contents. Instead of just naming the chapters as the featured animal’s name, the author used fun facts about the animals as titles. For example, the sea otter chapter is called “The Happy Ones (The Sea Otter)” and the elephant chapter is called “The Gentle Giant (The Elephant).” This engages readers right away and makes them want to read more about the animals, which is important in an informational book. The third reason I liked this book is because there were pictures in the background on every page, which gives readers a visual about the animal and their environment. It also keeps the reader’s attention when they have appealing pictures to connect to the text they’re reading. The big idea of this book was to present interesting facts about different animals in order to educate the reader. ( )

Animals Do the Strangest Things gives information on nineteen different animals. The main idea of this story is to teach children about characteristics, locations, and behaviors of animals that may be unknown to them. The author gets this idea across by separating each animal into its own chapter. Each chapter has a nickname for the animal that gives a short description of one of their attributes. For example the chapter on the blue whale is titled “The Biggest Ever” and the chapter on the elephant is called “The Gentle Giant.” These help give the reader a quick understanding of what the animal is all about. The author then goes on to describe many different and interesting facts about the animal like what they eat, where they live, what they do for fun, how they move, the emotions they give off, how they look, and many other characteristics. I enjoyed this book because the author made each animal into a story rather than listing off facts. This made it interesting to read while also being informative. I also liked how the author switched up which facts he included for each animal. This made things not so repetitive and made me want to keep reading and learning. The illustrations in the book also feel more story like and less like a list of facts. ( )

A fun romp through a book full of animals! Each animal has two or more pages describing their "strange" behavior in an easy to understand but not boring format. The drawings are smile-producing, too. ( )

The "...Strangest Things" series is a wonderful series for young elementary aged children. It is a great way to introduce them to science. I had these books when I was a child many years ago, and remembered them well. Fortunately, my mother saved them, so I have been able to share them with my own children who have been fascinated by the different animals, bugs, fish, and birds of the series. ( )