Rattlesnake dance

K-Gr 3-The folkloric notion that rattlesnakes rendezvous and dance informs this rhythmic picture book. Huge cartoon snakes in orange, yellow, and green slip into trances, wriggling, squirming, and glassy-eyed. They crawl into the rocks, shake and sway, and crawl away again. There's no particular story, just an amusing little rhyme about snake behavior that children will find fascinating. The pictures are simple large-scale sketches in nonthreatening pastels. At the end, youngsters are encouraged to pretend to be snakes and join the fun. Music for the text is included. Great fun for group sharing.-Ruth Semrau, Upshur County Public Library, Gilmer, TX (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

A rattlesnake slithers into a cave and goes into some kind of trance, wriggling and swaying with dozens of other rattlesnakes. After the snakes have snapped out of it, they leave. Arnosky's rhyming text, written as a song (musical score is included at the beginning of the book), may flow better when sung than when read. The watercolor illustrations for this slight story, showing glassy-eyed rattlers, are repetitive. From HORN BOOK Fall 2000, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.