“My body does amazing things,” begins the child narrator, listing some of the neat things hands, legs, and mouths can do. Marilyn Baillie, author of Owl’s Amazing Things Animals Do series, has created a catchy and rhythmical opening. Unfortunately, the pages that follow slip in and out of rhyming patterns rather haphazardly and many of the lines just don’t scan. One-quarter of the spreads don’t rhyme, and other rhymes, such as “paddles” and “waddle,” are a stretch.

The story then leaps from focusing on children’s bodies to children pretending to be animals. Various young children portray the actions of animals by mimicking characteristic behaviours. For example, as a turtle, the child pulls his head inside his raincoat, and as a robin, he slurps up a strand of spaghetti just like a robin tugging a worm out of the earth. Using other animal models, a child sniffs with her nose, hugs with her arms, grabs with his hands, jumps with her legs, and hangs on with his toes. The book’s best feature is the informative “Guess What?” spread at the back, which explains the special behaviours and abilities of the animals in the book.

Marisol Sarrazin’s illustrations portray children and animals in an overly fluffy style. Some of the spreads are too dark: the brown cat is hard to find in the shadows except for its gleaming eyes – too subtle a clue for many pre-schoolers. This artwork, paired with the awkward prose, results in a book that doesn’t deliver the fresh approach it hints at in its opening.