Preschoolers' curiosity makes them an ideal audience for books about animals and the natural world. These nonfiction picture books communicate information at a preschool-perfect pace — and with plenty of wonder.

In Woodpecker Wham!, author April Pulley Sayre uses a rhyming, sound word–filled text to introduce the distinctively noisy woodpecker and the rhythmic cadences that fill its industrious life: "Wedge it. Sledge it. / Wham by wham. / Clear those chips. / SLAM, SLAM, SLAM!" As several woodpecker species engage in their day-to-day routines, their actions and behaviors are characterized by sound — newly hatched babies crick, crack, flop; adults chip and chop at tree trunks and flick out the insects they find. Illustrator Steve Jenkins's cut- and torn-paper collage illustrations provide action-filled perspectives on the birds swooping, pecking, fanning, and preening. (Holt, 2–5 years)

Robin Page's A Chicken Followed Me Home: Questions and Answers About a Familiar Fowl is a lesson in book design of young informational books. Lots of white space allows the exemplar chicken, a Rhode Island Red, plenty of room; she is generally pictured at about half life-sized. Each page or spread asks and answers just one question about chickens and their care, and the sequence of questions is logical, with each answer building on what's come before. Page's Photoshop illustrations are warm and unclinical but spare and always attentive to the particular topic under review. (Simon/Beach Lane, 3–6 years)

Traveling Butterflies by Susumu Shingu traces the migration of the monarch butterfly from its northern home to its "winter sanctuary" in Mexico and back again. The story begins with eggs on a milkweed leaf and progresses as caterpillars hatch from the eggs, then grow, and then spin cocoons; butterflies emerge and take flight, traveling thousands of miles; and the whole process repeats itself. Shingu's account (translated from the Japanese) is at once poetic and informative. Each spread features vivid paintings of the insects, with brilliant close-ups alternating with sweeping butterfly's-eye vistas. (Owlkids, 3–6 years)

Wendell Minor compares and contrasts diurnal and nocturnal animals in Daylight Starlight Wildlife. Minor depicts an animal (a butterfly, for example) or group of animals (such as woodchucks) active in a meadow during the daytime hours. A corresponding illustration, most often on the facing page, shows a related animal or animals (such as a lunar moth or skunks) bathed in moonlight. Minimal text echoes the movements in each of the gouache illustrations in Minor's signature artistic style — detailed, luminous, and pristine. (Penguin/Paulsen, 3–6 years)

From the January 2016 issue of Notes from the Horn Book.