Snakes!

Can you climb a tree without using arms or legs? Can you smell odors by wiggling your tongue in the air? Snakes can! Beginning with these simple questions, award-winning author Laurence Pringle invites readers to explore the remarkable abilities and lives of snakes. Snakes are legless reptiles, but thanks to their powerful muscles and hundreds of rib bones they can coil, creep, climb, and swim. Some can even glide through the air. Join Laurence Pringle in this NSTA/CBC Outstanding Science Trade Book as he takes a look at some of the more than two thousand snakes that are found almost all over the world. A lively and informative text, joined with Meryl Henderson's bold and realistic art, explains how snakes hunt for food, move, shed their skin, give birth, and play important roles in nature. While snakes may look strange, this fascinating book shows why they are also wonderful creatures."The author of more than 100 books for children and teens has produced another winner in this attractive compendium of intriguing snake facts. . . . This handsome science title will slide off the shelf." --Kirkus Reviews


"With its crisp writing and profuse illustrations, it will please both browsers and report writers." --School Library Journal

* "Fascinating book. . . . Even readers fearful of snakes may find the subject a little less strange, a little more wonderful." --Booklist, starred reviewLaurence Pringle is the recipient of three major awards for his body of work--the Eva L. Gordon Award for Children's Science Literature, the Washington Post--Children's Book Guild Nonfiction Award, and a lifetime Achievement Prize from the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He lives in West Nyack, New York.

Meryl Henderson has illustrated many books for children, including Bats! Strange and Wonderful and other books in the Strange and Wonderful series. She lives in upstate New York.