This book lives in that gray area between fiction and nonfiction. The Cat in the Hat tells young readers all about the different types of primates that exist, including monkeys, apes, and lemurs.

Although billed as a beginner reader's book, this does not strike me as an "easy reader" at all. The vocabulary used is incredibly difficult, featuring such words as arboreal, brachiating, prehensile, and proboscis. Names of unusual primates are of course included, but I think young readers will struggle with recognizing/pronouncing tarsiers, lorises, and galago, to name a few.

However, I think this book would work well for an adult reading aloud to a child. It is chock full of information and ends with a glossary and sources for additional information. But again I'd stressed that I wouldn't give this title to a beginning/struggling reader to try to work out on her or his own; they'd end up more frustrated than anything else.

The chosen title of Can You See a Chimpanzee? is reminiscent of Dr. Seuss's Say Can You Say but do not be mistaken, this book contains none of the imaginative whimsy of a Seuss story. Beyond the Cat in the Hat and the children from that book, the illustrations do not scream Seussian either. However, the language does follow a basic rhyming pattern that is evocative of Seuss's style. ( )