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ABC ANIMALS

Name: ABC ANIMALS
Author: Christopher Evans
ISBN: 978-1-4413-3463-3

by Christopher Evans ; illustrated by Christopher Evans ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 2020

Wonderful. A stunning, breathtaking achievement.

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A plethora of mammals, reptiles, birds, and more fills this striking alphabet book.

There’s a cat, an elephant, a robin, and others that are instantly recognizable, along with several that are slightly familiar, like a badger, an iguana, and a lemur. A nautilus, a xenopus, and a urial are exotic and possibly completely unknown to many child readers. Each animal is presented in a double-page spread. Upper- and lowercase letters in a serif typeface and a modified cursive appear at the top of the verso page, within faint lines that might be seen on a school handwriting chart or practice exercise. A large uppercase letter fills the center of the page, with a design and color that mimics the illustration of the animal. Somewhere on the page is a silhouette of the animal, most often in light beige. The animal’s name is printed in a thin sans-serif at the bottom of the page. There is no other text. Evans’ depictions of each animal on the recto page go far beyond simple illustration. They are sharply delineated, deeply textured digital woodcuts, almost three-dimensional and touchable. The creatures’ eyes are incredibly expressive, gazing directly at readers as if offering their souls for inspection. The zebra on the book’s jacket is an exact duplicate of the one on the last page, with the addition of slightly raised texture that cries out for a reader’s delicate touch.

Wonderful. A stunning, breathtaking achievement. (illustrator's note) (Picture book. 4-10)

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2020

ISBN: 978-1-4413-3463-3

Page Count: 52

Publisher: Peter Pauper Press

Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2020

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2020

Categories:

CHILDREN'S ANIMALS | CHILDREN'S CONCEPTS

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BUTT OR FACE?

From the Butt or Face? series

by Kari Lavelle ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 2023

A gleeful game for budding naturalists.

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Artfully cropped animal portraits challenge viewers to guess which end they’re seeing.

In what will be a crowd-pleasing and inevitably raucous guessing game, a series of close-up stock photos invite children to call out one of the titular alternatives. A page turn reveals answers and basic facts about each creature backed up by more of the latter in a closing map and table. Some of the posers, like the tail of an okapi or the nose on a proboscis monkey, are easy enough to guess—but the moist nose on a star-nosed mole really does look like an anus, and the false “eyes” on the hind ends of a Cuyaba dwarf frog and a Promethea moth caterpillar will fool many. Better yet, Lavelle saves a kicker for the finale with a glimpse of a small parasitical pearlfish peeking out of a sea cucumber’s rear so that the answer is actually face and butt. “Animal identification can be tricky!” she concludes, noting that many of the features here function as defenses against attack: “In the animal world, sometimes your butt will save your face and your face just might save your butt!” (This book was reviewed digitally.)

A gleeful game for budding naturalists. (author’s note) (Informational picture book. 6-8)

Pub Date: July 11, 2023

ISBN: 9781728271170

Page Count: 40

Publisher: Sourcebooks eXplore

Review Posted Online: May 9, 2023

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2023

Categories:

CHILDREN'S ANIMALS | CHILDREN'S SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

- BOOK REVIEW
ODE TO GRAPEFRUIT
by Kari Lavelle ; illustrated by Bryan Collier

- BOOK REVIEW
WE MOVE THE WORLD
by Kari Lavelle ; illustrated by Nabi H. Ali

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DON'T TRUST FISH

by Neil Sharpson ; illustrated by Dan Santat ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 8, 2025

A ribald and uproarious warning to those unschooled in fishy goings-on.

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Sharpson offers so-fish-ticated readers a heads up about the true terror of the seas.

The title says it all. Our unseen narrator is just fine with other animals: mammals. Reptiles. Even birds. But fish? Don’t trust them! First off, the rules always seem to change with fish. Some live in fresh water; some reside in salt water. Some have gills, while others have lungs. You can never see what they’re up to, since they hang out underwater, and they’re always eating those poor, innocent crabs. Soon, the narrator introduces readers to Jeff, a vacant-eyed yellow fish—but don’t be fooled! Jeff’s “the craftiest fish of all.” All fish are, apparently, hellbent on world domination, the narrator warns. “DON’T TRUST FISH!” Finally, at the tail end, we get a sly glimpse of our unreliable narrator. Readers needn’t be ichthyologists to appreciate Sharpson’s meticulous comic timing. (“Ships always sink at sea. They never sink on land. Isn’t that strange?”) His delightful text, filled to the brim with jokes that read aloud brilliantly, pairs perfectly with Santat’s art, which shifts between extreme realism and goofy hilarity. He also fills the book with his own clever gags (such as an image of Gilligan’s Island’s S.S. Minnow going down and a bottle of sauce labeled “Surly Chik’n Srir’racha’r”).

A ribald and uproarious warning to those unschooled in fishy goings-on. (Picture book. 4-7)