What happens next? by Nicola Davies, illustrated by Marc Boutavant

This crossed my radar some time ago, but the "flip the flap" had me worried it was a lift the flap book, which don't last long in my library. We are hard on our books. So I had to wait until someone else bought it!

Yay! It's not a lift the flap, more a turn the flap. The pages are a kind of slick cardstock, with half-pages to be the flap. The first spread is part of the endpaper and shows a chameleon on the left and a grasshopper on the half page. Turn the page and the the pictures match up to show THWAP! the chameleon eats the grasshopper.

There are five scenarios. The last spread (included endpaper) shows small cameos of the all the animals and has a little lift-the-flap of a girl drawing her own picture.

Besides the chameleon eating the grasshopper, there's a beaver building a home, peacock spreading its tail, honeybee guiding the hive, and chimpanzees eating termites.

What makes this unique is not only the design of the book, and the brilliant pictures, but the selection of scenarios is much more than just the average food chain/metamorphosis examples you usually see in children's books.

Verdict: The bright colors, simple text, and interactive elements will make this a great book for toddler storytime. However, the book is written in a way that makes room for dialogue with older children as well. There's a whole series of these books and I would recommend buying them all.

ISBN: 9780763662646; Published 2012 by Candlewick; Borrowed from another library in my consortium; Purchased for the library.