Author: Ginjer Clarke
Title: Gross Out!
Illustrator: Pete Mueller
Genre: Non-Fiction
Subgenre: Informational
Theme: Learning about strange and interesting animals.
Primary/Secondary Characters: Leeches, Sea Slugs, Red-Bellied Piranhas, Hagfish, Dung Beetles, Velvet Worms, Horned Lizards, Surinam Toads, Vampire Bats, Armadillos, and Fulmars
Award(s)/Publication Year: no awards presented/2002
Publishing Company: Scholastic
Brief Summary/Book Usage: Giant leeches can get up to 18 inches long; they are not deadly although they suck blood out of humans/animals for hours. Sea slugs can come in many different colors and one type even has its internal organs on the outside surface of its body, one organ is the guts or cerata. The cerata on the slug is shaped like a knife and can be used to sting predators. Piranhas can consume a meal is 30 seconds, and eat sometimes without even chewing the pieces. A hagfish is almost blind and eats mainly dead fish, when another animal comes near the hagfish oozes slime to alert them of danger. This slime consumes the fish killing it because it is unable to breathe. The velvet worm has liquid glue that comes out of its eyes to trap insects; it dries instantly and preserves a great meal for the worm. The horned lizard when attacked squirts blood out of its eyes, it does not hurt the lizard but it scares other animals away from it. When the surinam toad mates the male places the eggs in the female’s back and the eggs get buried underneath her skin, inside her back the eggs grow until the frogs are ready to hatch. When they hatch they actually break the skin on the mother's back with their feet to get out. The vampire bat as you can imagine only drinks blood, however it rarely bites humans, its animal blood by choice is a cow. To me the grossest of all these animals is the armadillo; it actually gets inside of dead animals and eats the insects and insides out of the animal. In chapter four I learned about gross birds, the one I found the most interesting was the fulmar. When the fulmar is attacked or feels threatened it pukes up yellow oil on the attacking animal. I would use this book in my classroom with a mature audience to appreciate the knowledge inside. I would use this book in a science lesson when learning about unique and interesting animals.
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