WHERE IN THE WILD?

Not only do science and poetry blend nicely in this introduction to camouflage, but even sharp-eyed viewers will have trouble picking out the single small animals perched on similarly patterned backgrounds in Kuhn’s nature photographs. The ten short poems that face each full-page illustration offer hints—“ . . . nesting / outspread / wings of white / blend with birch bark / by day’s light”—but for the impatient or less acute each spread includes a gatefold that, when opened, reveals a washed-out version of the same picture with the hiding animal highlighted, plus a leaf of illustrated commentary. Aimed at slightly more advanced readers than Noelle Oliver’s Twilight Hunt (August 2007), this also features a wider range of creatures, from fawns and a coyote to a flounder and a crab spider. (Picture book/nonfiction. 7-9)