There are two types of people in the world – one, who when you mention the word “snake”, will jump five feet in the air, shudder, yell like a banshee, and proceed to tell you how snakes creep them out. Never mind if they have never even seen one. Like never ever. They are just scared or freaked out. And then there is the other kind, who will enthusiastically tell you everything there is to know about these slithery reptiles. Like everything. About the venomous and the non-venomous sort, their prey, their scales, everything.
It doesn’t matter which category you fall into, either way, you will love Little Snake Plays Hide & Seek: How Animals Hide, written by Mathangi Subramanian and illustrated by Suvidha Mistry (Scholastic Early Science).
Little Snake, the protagonist of this story, proposes a game of hide-and-seek one afternoon in the forest. All the animals – the turtle, the frog, the squirrel, crab, butterfly, grasshopper, parakeet and the tiger – flap, flutter, scurry, scamper, creep and crawl away to hide. It’s up to Little Snake to seek them out. But, how can she? After all, she can’t fly, swim, or run like the others. But Little Snake can use her tongue to smell and has excellent hearing. As she seeks, we find out a little bit about the other animals.
The picture book is an excellent way for children to learn about camouflage, mimicry, and how animals move, but it is also about making friends and the importance of inclusion.
Bonus read:
Serpy, the Snake by Rajiv Tambe (Pratham Books Storyweaver): All Serpy wants to do is move in a straight line. But snakes never do, do they? Serpy sets out to investigate why, and learns about the animal kingdom.
In collaboration with BAM Books, an Instagram-led project that highlights diverse books for children and young adults.
Guest Editor Diaries: Of snakes, stranglers and weeds - Eight-year-old Guest Editor Avni Meda assigns stories to the NiF team.
A flappy ending – Eight-year-old Guest Editor Avni Meda writes about the time she went in search of Bar-headed Geese.
The long and the short of it – Herpetologist and National Geographic Adventurer Gerry Martin on his favourite subjects: snakes.
Weed this carefully – Journalist Shamsheer Yousaf explains why harmless-looking weeds are so dangerous for our forests.
Check out more stories on our Young Tusks page.
