CLEVER CHAMELEON

The jungle animals, including walking stick, chameleon, parrot, lion, leopard, elephant, crocodile and giraffe, decide to play hide and seek. Elephant wants to be “it.” So after counting, he runs out to seek and find his buddies. He doesn’t find many of his friends; their camouflage is too good. Others he does find, despite their camouflage. At the end of the game only chameleon is still hiding thanks to his clever color-changing skin. Lodge’s acrylic, pencil and computer-tweaked illustrations are smiling, friendly animals in a bright, sunny jungle. Her happy, rhyming text is just as jaunty as you’d expect. This makes a perfect introduction to the concept of animal camouflage accompanied by an informational page about color, pattern and texture camouflage at the story’s end. An asset in any collection, story-timers will clamor to find the title character in each double-page spread. (Picture book. 3-8)