Color the Facts: Animals

An octopus has three hearts. A hippo makes its own sunscreen. Now go color them.

Every page teaches one thing that is TRUE: one animal, one verified fact, with the most surprising word underlined. Sixty facts were drafted and every one was checked against its source's own page — San Diego Zoo, NOAA, the Smithsonian's National Zoo, the National Park Service, USGS. Fifty-two survived. Those are the fifty-two in this book, and the eight that did not are the reason you can trust the rest.

• 52 animals, 52 different drawings — from elephant and lion to narwhal, platypus and axolotl. No animal is drawn twice to pad the count
• "Really:" tells you the real colors. Under every name, one line says what the animal actually looks like, checked against the same sources — so a crow never ends up bright yellow. It tells you; it never tells you which crayon to pick
• Quiet myth-busting — the camel's hump stores fat, not water; a porcupine cannot shoot its quills; an orca is a dolphin; a bat is not a bird
• Big bold outlines — crayons and markers both work
• Each fact sits on the same page as its picture, so any page can be torn out whole — nothing is stranded on the back of another animal
• A blank back behind every page — markers can never spoil the next animal
• An Animal Fact Expert certificate on the last page

The animals travel the world in order: big wild animals, then forests and deserts, the ocean, scales and shells, birds, and the small flyers and crawlers last.

For ages 4–8, in a big 8.5 × 8.5 inch format. Read-aloud easy for a four-year-old and read-alone fun for a seven-year-old — or sit two siblings together and let the older one read while the younger one colors. Classrooms and homeschools: it shelves beside an animal unit and the facts hold up to being asked about.

From KidsColorWorks — preschool books that work the way young hands do.