Book Descriptions
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.
From the Publisher
One hot day in the middle of a jungle, a strange little creature hatches out of an egg. "Who am I?" he asks himself. Off he plods through the tall grass to find out. He meets many animals but all of them are different. Will he ever find out who he is and what makes him special? Illustrations.
Publisher description retrieved from Google Books.