Independent Reading Level: Ages 9-14
Awards: Utah Beehive Book Award (Nominee — Informational Books — 2018)

I liked this book. It taught me a lot about animals and bugs I have never heard of. It includes different types of traps,and setups. This nonfiction book captured my attention unlike most other nonfiction books. Its just cool how Creatures in nature adapt to do things like create sculptures of themselves out of gathered materials. I find it incredible that a Grote's tiger moth can chirp 450 chirps per second. I may not like bugs to much but these species are just incredible.
The author mainly had different bugs on the list but he also had a bird and fish on the list . These animals adapted to change and now can blend in with their habitat. A few animals use camouflage. Other animals just attack. One of the camouflage animals is a lizard, it looks like a dead leaf but when he falls he can fly away. Another animal uses smell and music to get all the attention they need, its a caterpillar that smells and looks like an ant larvae,they treat her like a baby. These animals both use camouflage to survive and not get attacked by its enemy.

Summary:
This book takes a look at different animals that use mimicry and camouflage to help them hunt, evade predators, and thrive. Each of the nine chapters details a different animal that uses camouflage, disguises, or other tricks to help them in their survival. With each animal, the author describes how the animal uses their disguise in nature and then goes into detail about the scientific side of the trait.

Review:
This book does a great job of describing scientific processes in animals, but should be used in an upper elementary classroom. There is a lot of text on each page with academic language that would most likely be beyond the level of most younger grades, I think the best use of this book within a science lesson would be as an addendum to a unit of biomimicry, camouflage, or adaptation. While it does a great job of providing examples of those topics, a more focused text would be useful in the initial introduction of the topic. ( )

Also a great informational book that is SO cool. I love that this book has an intriguing story line for each section, and then addresses the science behind the story! ( )

Description:
This book is all about the amazing art of deception that many species in the animal kingdom exhibit, from chicks to spiders. The book is organized into chapters that feature each animal, describing how the creature uses deceit to trick its prey or avoid its predators. Each chapter also includes information on how the animal was first discovered. The end of this book contains an afterword that describes how animals like those discussed in the book acquire their trickster talents.

Personal reaction:
I feel like this book is best suited for readers who are very interested in how animals use deception as a means of survival or as a resource for readers who would like to learn more about a specific animal that is covered in the book. I like how each chapter is written as a story as this makes the material more exciting. I also like how each page is filled with clear and detailed photographs of the animals so that the reader can get an accurate idea of what the animal is like and how it uses its body or its surroundings to survive. This book would be appropriate for students in upper elementary grades.

Keywords/topics:
camouflage, animal mimicry, decoys, echolocation

A couple of uses:
- I would select a single chapter from this book to share with the class. For example, I could select Chapter 6, the "Dead Ringer" to introduce the class to how animals camouflage themselves as a means of survival. Students could then go into researching how other animals use camouflage to survive. Although I would only share a portion of the book with the class, I would keep the book out for students who would be interested in reading it during choice reading time.
- It would be fun to use the structure of this book to create a class book on predators and prey. Each student could select an animal to research and then mimic the organization book to create their own chapter on how their animal either survives from being eaten by a predator or survives by outsmarting its prey. Students could model their chapter after the book's chapters by forming their research into a story. Then they could create a small text box with quick facts, similar to how each chapter does in the book and select a picture to include in their chapter. ( )