Behold the chameleon

Easy text in huge font, sometimes just one word per page, creates a short narrative in this book, which introduces young readers to chameleons' major features and behaviors: "Four sturdy legs creep and crawl through lush, tall trees." In between, smaller text gives much more detail for advanced readers or for parents or teachers to share, offering facts about different species of chameleon and their habitats and habits. Readers may be in for some surprises--the creature's color change is not for camouflage, for example, and many chameleons' bones can glow. Slade doesn't shy away from providing unsavory information--a Jackson's chameleon, for example, will shove competing chameleons off tree branches--and Gonzalez' images show the creatures looking realistically dour and sometimes menacing. The images here are just magnificent, with jewel-tone portraits in pastels, colored pencils, and airbrush of the animals and their lush surroundings creating feasts for young eyes. There are no notes on sources, but a selected bibliography and an appended nonfiction section with color photos add value. An engaging pick for animal collections.

The ins and outs of chameleon behavior. Slade and Gonzalez's third book in a series that began withBehold the Octopus (2023), followed byBehold the Hummingbird (2024), carries on with a peek into the life of chameleons, of which there are more than 220 individual species. Slade uses a similar structure to her previous books. She introduces the reptile with two-level text: One word--usually a verb or adjective--appears on the left-hand side of the spread, while a longer paragraph appears on the right. All the text is set against Gonzalez's gloriously illustrated full spreads. The wordstalking is paired with text describing the chameleon's ability to use its eyes independently so that "it may fix one eye on its tasty prey, while the other looks out for predators." Each paragraph includes a mention of one species of chameleon, in the latter case, the African chameleon. On another page,clinging introduces the arboreal nature of the chameleon and the way it "curves its prehensile tail around a branch" to hold on to its home in the trees. For this entry, the jewel chameleon of Madagascar serves as an example, and the reptile appears almost beaded in the dazzling accompanying image. Featuring pastels, colored pencils, and airbrush, Gonzalez's art is stupendous in comparison to the text, which is rich in facts but somewhat dry. Strangely, a lovely description about baby chameleons appears at the conclusion rather than at the beginning. Resplendent illustrations accompany solid text. (photographs, selected bibliography, websites)(Informational picture book. 5-9) Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.