Bum or Face

What’s it about?

The story.

Here's the challenge: study a close-up photo of a mystery animal, then decide whether you're looking at its bum or its face. Turn the page and the full photo reveals the answer, along with a fast-fact box explaining how each creature really uses its extraordinary rear or front end. Kari Lavelle mines the wonderfully weird world of camouflage and trickery, from the Cuyaba dwarf frog, whose backside is marked with fake eyes to scare off predators, to the Mary River turtle, which can actually breathe through its bottom. The premise is pure playground giggles, but the science underneath is genuine and surprising, and the interactive guess-and-reveal format turns each page into a game. Bright, photographic and packed with puns, it is exactly the kind of gross-out non-fiction that hooks reluctant readers and animal-fact obsessives alike, and it is just as much fun read aloud to a whole class as it is one to one.