Book Description
for Who Am I? by Gervase Phinn and Tony Ross
From Cooperative Children's Book Center (CCBC)
A playful twist on the classic story Are You My Mother? (Random House, 1967) has a newly hatched lizard approaching one creature after another in search of the answer to the questions “Who am I?” and “Where do I come from?” In turn a giraffe, an elephant, a cheetah, a rhinoceros, and a chimpanzee offer no enlightenment, though each does have quite a bit to say about himself. Then the lizard encounters a creature “with great yellow eyes and a wide smiling mouth”—a crocodile—who is happy to answer the lizard’s questions if he comes a little closer and climbs onto the crocodile’s nose. Uh-oh. But the little lizard is saved just in time by the appearance of … a big lizard—his mother! Tony Ross’s illustrations add to the humor of Gervase Phinn’s entertaining story as they show the little lizard is, in fact, a chameleon whose appearance has morphed to match each of the animals he encounters. The chameleon is not identified as a chameleon by name until the penultimate page spread, with a final turn of the page punctuating the reveal with more visual humor. (Ages 3–6)
CCBC Choices 2013. © Cooperative Children's Book Center, Univ. of Wisconsin - Madison, 2013. Used with permission.