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BABY ANIMALS

Name: BABY ANIMALS
Author: Yu-Hsuan Huang
ISBN: 978-2-7338-5915-5

From the My First Interactive Board Book series

illustrated by Yu-Hsuan Huang ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 9, 2018

Endearingly playful.

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Little fingers can make young critters grow and play by sliding relatively-sturdy tabs and panels.

On the cover, a lion cub grows into an adult male lion with a full mane and a tuft at the end of his tail with a right swipe of a tab. Most of the internal pages follow a similar pattern. First, readers are introduced to each baby animal’s home or environment on the verso; the interactive feature appears on the recto, often with a finger-sized hole in the panel for ease of sliding, with a sentence of descriptive text floating above it. The cleverest gimmick is a nested double panel that pulls out from the right-hand page so a young snake can grow longer. The final double-page spread, which reviews what has come before and introduces brand-new concepts, includes four flaps and four panels with simple queries and captions. A companion title, On the Farm, illustrated by Mélanie Combes, is formatted identically and introduces youngsters to chickens, pigs, and more. Readers can shear the wool off a sheep with a single swipe. Some of the features are a bit more subtle, as the panel to make a cow chew her cud only makes the grass in her mouth (which is not a cud) wiggle a tiny bit. The art of both offerings is similar even though it is by two different creators, employing soft tones and rounded lines to create big-eyed, friendly creatures.

Endearingly playful. (Board book. 1-3)