100 books like Who's Hiding on the Savanna?

By Katharine McEwen (illustrator),

Here are 100 books that Who's Hiding on the Savanna? fans have personally recommended if you like Who's Hiding on the Savanna?. Shepherd is a community of 10,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of Lois Looks for Bob at the Museum

Natasha Wing Author Of Squeak-a-boo!

From my list on cute & cuddly animal lift-the-flap for kids.

Why am I passionate about this?

As an animal advocate and part-time pet sitter, I wanted to instill the love of animals to babies with a fun board book. I’ve always enjoyed the surprise factor of lift-the-flaps so I was thrilled when Squeak-a-boo! was published. These types of books make for wonderful interactive bonding moments between reader and baby. I hope you enjoy the books on this list, not only for their fun concepts and text, but also for their colorful illustrations. 

Natasha's book list on cute & cuddly animal lift-the-flap for kids

Natasha Wing Why did Natasha love this book?

Kids love cats and Lois is a wide-eyed black and white cat who is looking for her yellow bird friend, Bob.

In this museum location, Lois looks behind such things as a painting and a vase that are at the museum. She finds other animals but not Bob. Until the end of course! The colors are bright and in large blocks which 0-3 year olds will gravitate to.

This is one in series of Lois Looks for Bob books. Other topics include beach, home, and park. 

By Gerry Turley (illustrator),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Lois Looks for Bob at the Museum as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Little readers will love helping Lois search for her friend Bob behind museum artifacts and encountering their friends along the way in this quirky lift-the-flap book with a retro feel.

The next title in this quirky lift-the-flap book series from illustrator Gerry Turley appeal with their offbeat humor. Little readers will love helping Lois search for her friend Bob behind museum artifacts and encountering their friends along the way.


Book cover of Animal Families: Snow

Natasha Wing Author Of Squeak-a-boo!

From my list on cute & cuddly animal lift-the-flap for kids.

Why am I passionate about this?

As an animal advocate and part-time pet sitter, I wanted to instill the love of animals to babies with a fun board book. I’ve always enjoyed the surprise factor of lift-the-flaps so I was thrilled when Squeak-a-boo! was published. These types of books make for wonderful interactive bonding moments between reader and baby. I hope you enjoy the books on this list, not only for their fun concepts and text, but also for their colorful illustrations. 

Natasha's book list on cute & cuddly animal lift-the-flap for kids

Natasha Wing Why did Natasha love this book?

This book helps young ones learn what daddy, mommy, and baby animals are called.

The guessing game part is after the text that asks what a baby is called. The child lifts the flap and finds out. At the end, kids find out what groups of the animals mentioned are called. Did you know that a group of hares is called a drove? Parents will learn things too!

The title Snow is a bit deceptive but the interiors deliver. 

By Jane Ormes (illustrator),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Animal Families as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it. This book is for kids age 2, 3, 4, and 5.

What is this book about?

Find out the different names for mother and father animals that live in snowy climates—then lift the flap to find the babies and learn what they are called. This striking, satisfying introduction to animal families features screen-printed artwork and bold neon ink to capture the attention and imagination of babies and toddlers.


Book cover of Picky Panda (With Fun Flaps to Lift)

Natasha Wing Author Of Squeak-a-boo!

From my list on cute & cuddly animal lift-the-flap for kids.

Why am I passionate about this?

As an animal advocate and part-time pet sitter, I wanted to instill the love of animals to babies with a fun board book. I’ve always enjoyed the surprise factor of lift-the-flaps so I was thrilled when Squeak-a-boo! was published. These types of books make for wonderful interactive bonding moments between reader and baby. I hope you enjoy the books on this list, not only for their fun concepts and text, but also for their colorful illustrations. 

Natasha's book list on cute & cuddly animal lift-the-flap for kids

Natasha Wing Why did Natasha love this book?

This Panda is very certain about what he likes and doesn’t like.

You could say he’s very black and white about his opinions. And that’s why the mostly black-and-white paper cut illustrations work even more! Panda’s house is stark as well.

Then one day he begrudgingly accepts a red flower from an elephant which throws him off. But in the end he makes it work. I love the graphic look of the art. 

By Jackie Huang,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Picky Panda (With Fun Flaps to Lift) as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it. This book is for kids age 2, 3, 4, and 5.

What is this book about?

Celebrate the joys of fresh perspectives and unexpected beauty in this touching lift-the-flap picture book from paper engineer Jackie HuangPersnickety Mr. Panda likes his world to be just so. His decisions are always easy: yes or no; good or bad; right or wrong; black or white . . . until one day when the gift of a red flower changes everything. Touching, clever, and with a great message about remaining flexible and open to the beauty in the world, this lift-the-flap picture book is an innovative and heartwarming story sure to resonate with readers. Author-illustrator Jackie Huang brings her utterly…


Book cover of Everyone Is Yawning

Natasha Wing Author Of Squeak-a-boo!

From my list on cute & cuddly animal lift-the-flap for kids.

Why am I passionate about this?

As an animal advocate and part-time pet sitter, I wanted to instill the love of animals to babies with a fun board book. I’ve always enjoyed the surprise factor of lift-the-flaps so I was thrilled when Squeak-a-boo! was published. These types of books make for wonderful interactive bonding moments between reader and baby. I hope you enjoy the books on this list, not only for their fun concepts and text, but also for their colorful illustrations. 

Natasha's book list on cute & cuddly animal lift-the-flap for kids

Natasha Wing Why did Natasha love this book?

Yawns are contagious! So is this book.

Turn bedtime into a fun game by having your child yawn at every flap lift and see how sleepy they get. The animals are simple and bold with expression. Kids lift the flap of the animal’s mouth and get to see inside the mouth.

I can see parents using this book to point out how animals have different types of teeth. I like how the flaps reveal not just an answer, but that it prompts an action by the child to yawn along as well.

By Anita Bijsterbosch (illustrator),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Everyone Is Yawning as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it. This book is for kids age 2, 3, 4, and 5.

What is this book about?

It's time for bed! The kitten yawns. Look. I think it is tired. All the little animals yawn. And the little kid? Does the little kid yawn too? You'll find out as you lift-the-flaps in this surprising book. A sleepytime book filled with tired animals and friendly flaps from the author-illustrator of the Oppenheim Gold Award winner Whose Hat is That?


Book cover of How to Be an Elephant

Patricia Newman Author Of Eavesdropping on Elephants: How Listening Helps Conservation

From my list on elephants for people who love them.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a Sibert Honor author and write books for kids and teens about nature. Ever since I saw an elephant skull on the savanna in Kenya, I’ve been fascinated by elephants. When my daughter was an undergrad, she worked with Katy Payne and the Elephant Listening Project, and I knew I had to write about ELP’s astounding work—one of the only groups working with forest elephants. I hope you enjoy the QR codes in Eavesdropping on Elephants. Katy and her colleagues were very generous with their work. The more I write the more I discover our connections to our natural world that humble me and fill me with gratitude. 

Patricia's book list on elephants for people who love them

Patricia Newman Why did Patricia love this book?

Katherine Roy’s beautifully illustrated picture book includes lots of fun information for elephant lovers. We follow an infant elephant as he learns how to survive on the plains, including his place in the family, how to walk and use his trunk, how to communicate with the herd, and how to stay cool in the scorching sun. A unique portrait of an elephant’s life.

By Katherine Roy,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked How to Be an Elephant as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it. This book is for kids age 7, 8, 9, and 10.

What is this book about?

Africa is not an easy place to live, even for the enormous elephants that call it home. Foraging for food and water and fighting off predators are only a few of the many skills that these giants must acquire as part of the long learning process that begins immediately after birth. Thankfully, they have a large familial network in place to teach them how to wash and drink and whiffle and roar - everything they need to know about how to be an elephant. Award-winning author-illustrator Katherine Roy's How to Be an Elephant delves into the intricate family dynamics at…


Book cover of Anansi the Spider: A Tale from the Ashanti

Kwame Nyong'o Author Of A Tasty Maandazi

From my list on what life is like in Africa for children.

Why am I passionate about this?

As a Kenyan/American raised in both countries, I noticed growing up that there was very little creative content about Africa. Whilst in Kenya, I experienced much joy and fun in the culture and felt that other people in other parts of the world would also enjoy it. Loving reading, drawing, comics, and movies, I felt it would be useful to create such content about Africa. I was very fortunate to study arts at an undergraduate and graduate level in the US. This formal training, combined with extensive travel around Africa and the diaspora, has informed my sense of book and film creation and appreciation. I hope you enjoy this book list that I’ve curated!

Kwame's book list on what life is like in Africa for children

Kwame Nyong'o Why did Kwame love this book?

Anansi the Spider is one of the classic African stories that inspired me to go into storytelling as a career. Reading this book, and watching its animated counterpart as a child, totally enthralled me. The combination of the bright, bold colours and graphical aesthetic, with the mystique of the folklore felt just like magic to me. The fable told here comes off as profound yet funny and quirky. This book is a must for anyone interested in fables and African folklore in particular.

By Gerald McDermott,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Anansi the Spider as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it. This book is for kids age 4, 5, 6, and 7.

What is this book about?

Anansi, one of the great folk heroes of the world, is saved from a terrible fate by his six sons in this traditional tale from West Africa.


Book cover of Dictatorland: The Men Who Stole Africa

Irina Filatova Author Of The Hidden Thread. Russia and South Africa in the Soviet Era

From my list on to understand what is wrong and right with Africa.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a South African historian of Russian origin, who has studied and taught African history since the late 1960s. For us, the Russians, Africa was then an alluring terra incognita of wild nature, adventure, human suffering, struggles, and tenacity. I have studied how Africa became what it is for 50 years and lived in it for 30. I have learnt a lot about it, but for me it is still a land of human suffering, struggles and tenacity, wild nature, and adventure, and it is still alluring. 

Irina's book list on to understand what is wrong and right with Africa

Irina Filatova Why did Irina love this book?

Rich in interesting and juicy detail, this account of governance in Africa presents a chronicle, rather than an analysis, of what was, and still is, wrong with the continent. Kenyon tells the story of state and power differently, basing it on personalities and circumstances, rather than ages-long continuities. His personalities are the corrupt leaders of seven unhappy countries, who managed to amass enormous power and keep it for decades. With such personalities come passions, greed, and immeasurable cruelty to their compatriots, all presented in intimate detail, as the author saw it all – he was there. But the global context does not go away. None of his “heroes” could have turned into the monsters they became without the interaction with and support, even if indirect, of global actors who needed the resources which their countries possess, natural or human. 

By Paul Kenyon,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Dictatorland as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A Financial Times Book of the Year

'Jaw-dropping' Daily Express

'Grimly fascinating' Financial Times

'Humane, timely, accessible and well-researched' Irish Times

The dictator who grew so rich on his country's cocoa crop that he built a 35-storey-high basilica in the jungles of the Ivory Coast. The austere, incorruptible leader who has shut Eritrea off from the world in a permanent state of war and conscripted every adult into the armed forces. In Equatorial Guinea, the paranoid despot who thought Hitler was the saviour of Africa and waged a relentless campaign of terror against his own people. The Libyan army officer…


Book cover of Afro-Catholic Festivals in the Americas: Performance, Representation, and the Making of Black Atlantic Tradition

Jeroen Dewulf Author Of From the Kingdom of Kongo to Congo Square: Kongo Dances and the Origins of the Mardi Gras Indians

From my list on Atlantic cultural history.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a philologist with a passion for Atlantic cultural history. What started with a research project on the African-American Pinkster tradition and the African community in seventeenth-century Dutch Manhattan led me to New Orleans’ Congo Square and has meanwhile expanded to the African Atlantic islands, the Caribbean, and Latin America. With fluency in several foreign languages, I have tried to demonstrate in my publications that we can achieve a better understanding of Black cultural and religious identity formation in the Americas by adopting a multilingual and Atlantic perspective. 

Jeroen's book list on Atlantic cultural history

Jeroen Dewulf Why did Jeroen love this book?

This edited volume studies Black festive traditions in the Americas that are rooted in African interpretations of early-modern Iberian customs. It shows how, from the beginning of the transatlantic slave trade, enslaved and free Africans in the Americas used Catholic brotherhoods as spaces for cultural and religious expression, social organization, and mutual aid. By demonstrating that the syncretic development of certain Black performance traditions in the Americas is a phenomenon that already set in on African soil, it breaks with previous scholarship that (mis)interpreted these festive traditions in the Americas as new, Creole syncretisms. I am convinced that this pioneering book will strongly affect the way future generations of scholars will come to understand Black cultural and religious identity formation in the Americas.

By Cécile Fromont,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Afro-Catholic Festivals in the Americas as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This volume demonstrates how, from the beginning of the Atlantic slave trade, enslaved and free Africans in the Americas used Catholicism and Christian-derived celebrations as spaces for autonomous cultural expression, social organization, and political empowerment. Their appropriation of Catholic-based celebrations calls into question the long-held idea that Africans and their descendants in the diaspora either resignedly accepted Christianity or else transformed its religious rituals into syncretic objects of stealthy resistance.

In cities and on plantations throughout the Americas, men and women of African birth or descent staged mock battles against heathens, elected Christian queens and kings with great pageantry, and…


Book cover of Girl Who Loved Giraffes: And Became the World's First Giraffologist

Jill Heinerth Author Of The Aquanaut

From my list on young explorers.

Why am I passionate about this?

I'm a world-class underwater explorer, writer, photographer, speaker, and filmmaker. A pioneer of technical rebreather diving, I have led expeditions into icebergs in Antarctica, volcanic lava tubes, and submerged caves worldwide. As a child, these fanciful places were just a part of my wildest dreams. The Aquanaut tells the story of how I turned my imaginative journeys into reality and became a celebrated underwater explorer.

Jill's book list on young explorers

Jill Heinerth Why did Jill love this book?

When Anne Innis Dagg was a little girl, she longed to study giraffes in Africa. Many obstacles including gender discrimination stood in her way, so she hide her female identity to get a job and then traveled to Africa on her own. Anne fulfilled her dream and became the world's leading scientific expert on giraffes, inspiring the next generation of women scientists to pursue their dreams.

By Kathy Stinson, Francois Thisdale (illustrator),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Girl Who Loved Giraffes as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it. This book is for kids age 5, 6, 7, and 8.

What is this book about?

When Anne Innis Dagg saw her first giraffe in a zoo she was entranced. So much so that a love for giraffes shaped her whole life. She decided at a young age that she would one day travel from her home in Canada to study giraffes in their natural environment in Africa.

After overcoming obstacles based on her gender, Anne succeeded in fulfilling her dream in 1956 and became the world's leading scientific expert on giraffes.

In The Girl Who Loved Giraffes, Kathy Stinson and Francois Thisdale have created a beautiful picture book that captures the dramatic story of Anne's…


Book cover of Born in Blackness: Africa, Africans, and the Making of the Modern World, 1471 to the Second World War

Noel Keough Author Of Sustainability Matters: Prospects for a Just Transition in Calgary, Canada’s Petro-City

From my list on myth demonstrating why sustainability matters.

Why am I passionate about this?

Injustice has always motivated my research and activism. I have always been fascinated by nature and by the complexity of cities. For 25 years I have pursued these passions through the lens of sustainability. In 1996, I co-founded the not-for-profit Sustainable Calgary Society. My extensive work and travel in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, have given me a healthy skepticism of the West’s dominant cultural myths of superiority and benevolence and a keen awareness of the injustice of the global economic order. My book selections shed light on these myths and suggest alternative stories of where we come from, who we are, and who we might become. 

Noel's book list on myth demonstrating why sustainability matters

Noel Keough Why did Noel love this book?

In these times of Black Lives Matter, emboldened white-supremicists, and with European dominance descendant, Born into Blackness is a revelatory and blunt dose of historical reality. I was not fully aware of the centrality of the slave economy in Europe’s rise to global dominance. Most importantly, I was ignorant of the level of cultural, political, and economic sophistication of the African nations when the Portuguese first explored the west coast of Africa. I had some understanding of the Haitian revolution and its manifestation of the enlightenment ideals, but this book opened my eyes to the historical ripples of the revolution: the Louisiana purchase, ceding much of present-day Southern US from Napoleon’s France; the sale and forced-march of thousands of slaves into the cotton-growing south, fueling an economic take-off that made the US an imperial power.

By Howard W. French,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Born in Blackness as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In a sweeping narrative that traverses 600 years, one that eloquently weaves precise historical detail with poignant personal reportage, Pulitzer Prize finalist Howard W. French retells the story of medieval and emerging Africa, demonstrating how the economic ascendancy of Europe, the anchoring of democracy in America and the fulfillment of so-called Enlightenment ideals all grew out of Europe's dehumanising engagement with the "darkest" continent.

Born in Blackness dramatically retrieves the lives of major African historical figures whose stories have been repeatedly etiolated and erased over centuries, from unimaginably rich medieval African emperors who traded with Asia; to Kongo sovereigns who…


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