Stinkiest!: 20 Smelly Animals

by Steve Jenkins, Steve Jenkins (Illustrator)

Overview

Caldecott Honor winner Steve Jenkins is back with more Extreme Animals, perfect for young readers looking for accessible nonfiction chock full of incredible art. Stinkiest! will focus on the smelliest members of the animal kingdom. 

Through illustrations, infographics, facts, and figures, readers will see how big each animal is compared to humans, where it lives on the globe, and just how putrid it can be! 

With his signature art style, Steve Jenkins' Extreme Animals reader series explores nature's truly superlative animals. These readers are fact-packed and span the globe, detailing the astounding abilities of every shape, size, and species. Each installment focuses on amazing and unusual animals, making these nonfiction readers accessible, informative, and fascinating.  

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781328841971
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	05/22/2018
Series:	Extreme Animals
Pages:	40
Sales rank:	1,065,146
Product dimensions:	5.80(w) x 8.80(h) x 0.30(d)
Age Range:	6 - 9 Years

About the Author

Steve Jenkins wrote and illustrated many nonfiction picture books for young readers, including the Caldecott Honor Book What Do You Do with a Tail Like This? His books have been called stunning, eye-popping, inventive, gorgeous, masterful, extraordinary, playful, irresistible, compelling, engaging, accessible, glorious, and informative.

Steve Jenkins wrote and illustrated many nonfiction picture books for young readers, including the Caldecott Honor Book What Do You Do with a Tail Like This? His books have been called stunning, eye-popping, inventive, gorgeous, masterful, extraordinary, playful, irresistible, compelling, engaging, accessible, glorious, and informative.

Table of Contents

Whew!: introduction 4

Smellier than a skunk: lesser anteater 6

Stink bomb: honey badger 8

Scaly stinker: tree pangolin 9

Tangled up in goo: spiny-tailed gecko 10

Urrrp!: European roller 12

Take a step back: striped skunk 14

Beetle defense: desert stink bug 15

Bombs away!: bombardier beetle 16

Slinky and stinky: King ratsnake 18

Don't touch me: green wood hoopoe 20

Stink fight!: ring-tailed lemur 21

Smoke screen: sea hare 22

Smelly act: Virginia opossum 24

How does your garden grow?: three-toed sloth 26

Bird farts: hoatzin 27

Stinky protection: common earwig 28

Danger!: African elephant 30

Bug repellent: millipede 32

Sour spray: giant whiptail scorpion 33

Stinkiest of all?: striped polecat 34

Why do some animals smell bad? 36

Glossary 38

Bibliography 39

Editorial Reviews

05/21/2018
In this addition to the Extreme Animals series, author-illustrator Jenkins explores aromatic animals, leading with an irresistible question: “What animal is the smelliest of all?” Omitting strong odors actually serves a purpose for many species on the list, Jenkins explains—notably, as self-defense and to protect territory (predators don’t want to be around or eat stinky animals). Mammals on the list include the honey badger, striped skunk, and ring-tailed lemur; bugs, sea creatures, and birds are also contenders: the hoatzin (aka, “stink bird”) takes a long time to digest food, resulting in “a lot of smelly gas—bird farts.” A purple sea slug called the sea hare, meanwhile, “protects itself by releasing toxic, bad-tasting purple ink.” Jenkins supplies additional facts about the animals, making their stinky characteristics just one aspect of their biology; his trademark torn-paper collages offer realistic and distinctive visual texture for each animal subject. Also available: Speediest: 19 Very Fast Animals. Ages 6–9. (May)

Publishers Weekly

"Excellent nonfiction that has the potential to make reluctant readers beginning bookworms. Not at all stinky!"—Kirkus, STARRED review  "[Jenkins'] trademark torn-paper collages offer realistic and distinctive visual texture for each animal subject."—Publishers Weekly —

From the Publisher

01/01/2018
Gr 1–3—Jenkins offers an informative and lively journey into the world of stinky and speedy animals for primary grade students. Smart layout design in both volumes will make for a seamless reading experience for a variety of learners—fact-filled short paragraphs, maps, size comparison diagrams, and accurate illustrations will please browsers and researchers alike. In Stinkiest!, readers will learn that the honey badger uses a stink bomb if threatened and even birds are in on the smelly action—the hoatzin farts a lot and the female green wood hoopoe can spray a foul oil to deter predators. Speediest! is a solid mix of familiar and unexpected creatures: cheetahs and brown hares but also mantis shrimps and aardvarks. Both volumes are graced with Jenkins's signature torn- and cut-paper collage, which showcase a variety of bold colors and textures. Overall, the two titles have a playful and inviting tone that will be appreciated by kids. However, the majority of the titles cited in each book's bibliography are quite old with most published in the early 2000s but a few in the 1980s and 90s. VERDICT A riveting series for animal lovers and a good choice for science shelves.—Kathia Ibacache, Simi Valley Public Library, CA

School Library Journal

★ 2018-02-13
Striking pictures and intriguing facts are paired to entice beginning readers. Page headings such as "Bird farts" and "Urrp!" and Jenkins' accurate collage illustrations will draw even reluctant readers in. Information chosen for its "eww" effect will keep them reading despite the challenging vocabulary. Clean, white backgrounds, predictable layout, and varied typefaces help to organize the information. For example, how each critter qualifies as stinky is always discussed in the first paragraph, while callouts explain other behaviors or defense mechanisms. As in earlier series titles, a graphic on each spread indicates scale using either an adult human man or a human hand, while a world map shows habitat. The book concludes with a graphic that shows which critters use smell as a defense or to mark territory and which just live in stinky places. In the similarly formatted Speediest! (published simultaneously), that space is devoted to a chart showing each animal's speed in miles and kilometers per hour. The aardvark's 1/10 mph may seem unimpressive until readers see the explanation that this is how fast the animal can dig into earth. The quick movements of the mantis shrimp and the Panamanian termite are compared (quite favorably) to the blink of an eye. Backmatter in each volume includes a one-page glossary and a bibliography of more comprehensive nonfiction published between 1991 and 2015.Excellent nonfiction that has the potential to make reluctant readers beginning bookworms. Not at all stinky! (Informational early reader. 5-10)

Kirkus Reviews