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SUPERSQUADS! by Heather Lang

SUPERSQUADS!

Animal Heroes

From the Animal Heroes series

by Heather Lang & Jamie Harper ; illustrated by Jamie Harper

Pub Date: Nov. 18th, 2025
ISBN: 9781536217988
Publisher: Candlewick

Give a rousing cheer for animals that help one another out.

In the same exuberant vein as their salutes to “super” animal moms and dads, Lang and Harper pay tribute to natural friends, families, and communities that work as “supersquads,” including meerkat and chickadee lookouts, fungi-cultivating ants on “Team Leaf-Cutter,” snow monkeys grooming each other, and even interspecies mutual-protection partnerships like those between keen-eyed ostriches and zebras gifted with acute senses of hearing and smell. Succinct explanations of how each collective task or relationship functions accompany Harper’s lively cartoon views of creatures in animated poses, some uttering jokes and wisecracks aimed over the heads of younger audiences. “You should be dancing!” warbles a honeybee Travolta, striking a disco pose. “I’ll have what she’s having,” comments an envious snow monkey. But a diminutive cleaner shrimp finishing up a “Turbo Treatment” on a moray eel’s sharp teeth makes the overall theme explicit for all: “Teamwork makes the dream work.” The authors prompt young readers to identify and organize their own supersquads to join the animal “teams” marching past at the finale.

Droll glimpses of nature being cooperative in tooth and claw.

(more information on the species mentioned, resources) (Informational picture book. 5-8)