Do You Know Where the Animals Live?, animal questions kids actually have

A book whose title asks a question owns a special spot to those kidlit readers. Do You Know Where the Animals Live? is a children’s book from Peter Wohlleben, who young readers might know from The Hidden Life of Trees or The Inner Life of Animals. This is our first time reading one of his books and the difference in how he approaches nature content, relative to how some readers might be used to reading about it is immediate and respectful.

The elephant in the room that most parents or educators gauge nature or STEM books are National Geographic. Those books are big, bright, colorful, and present their information in blurbs and paragraphs. Granted there are some paragraphs or narrative elements in Nat Geo books, but they’re a different breed and clearly labeled as such. The more commonly compared book Do You Know Where the Animals Live? is the big, reference-style book.

All of this background information is important because the biggest thing that you’ll notice when you pick up Do You Know Where the Animals Live? is that it’s broken up into chapters with different subjects. Animal babies, survival techniques, language, what they eat, and more are broken up into 10-page, age-appropriate chapters. Within those chapters, every two pages is dedicated to a specific topic via a question. Who lives in your backyard, why do birds fly south, do animals have houses, and what can you find in a stream are the questions that make up the first chapter.

It simply asks the question and then spends the majority of them answering or providing examples of each scenario. For example, readers are given six paragraphs of examples of animals that fly south, the things they’ll experience during the journey, and what they can expect once they arrive. These examples are accompanied by three full-color photographs that young readers want to see.   

To an extent, this book reminds us of is What Breathes Through Its Butt?, except that book is geared more towards audiences that are STEM curious. Do You Know Where Animals Live? depends on the existing interest that kids have in the common things that they see in nature. It’s not a deep dive into the animal kingdom. The reading level is on par for those upper-elementary students. It doesn’t have the hyper colors or manic font of its better-known contemporary and that is OK. Some readers just want their animal, STEM-based information is a common sense, fact-based presentation, and those are the people who will immediately resonate with Do You Know Where The Animals Live?.

Do You Know Where the Animals Live?, Discovering The Incredible Creatures All Around Us is by Peter Wohlleben and on Greystone Kids.

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