ANIMAL MASQUERADE

Animals everywhere, all in disguise!

It’s time for the animal masquerade, and lion begins considering his costume. He settles on…an elephant. But what will the elephant be? A parrot. And which costume will the parrot choose? A turn of the page reveals all. Simple text, translated from French, accompanies inventive colored-pencil illustrations of an assortment of animals in and out of costume on white backgrounds. At times, the typography cleverly changes to reflect the costume (the word "bat" is upside down, and the letters in "ostrich" sink down under the margins). For the most part, each spread features an animal in disguise and then the actual animal pondering what his or her costume should be, though there are exceptions. A turtle dresses as Little Red Riding Hood, who in turn dresses as a chocolate cake, a dessert the bear loves, for instance. The text is clear but somewhat extraneous, existing primarily to provide a context for the illustrations. The choice of animals feels haphazard (gorilla, armadillo, chicken and unicorn, to name a few), and while this makes for quirky and amusing pictures, it takes away from the general coherence of the story, such as it is. That said, the pictures are colorful, appealing and childlike, and youngsters will enjoy the gentle humor of the images while considering which animal they’d like to be; the costumes themselves seem like they would be fairly easy to re-create.

A good choice for imaginative animal lovers.