A fresh tribute to the creative possibilities of letter-form art: stylish and sophisticated.
A large-format letter-art menagerie from the Australian creator of Spellbound: Making Pictures With the A-B-C (2016).
Coote freely mixes typefaces, sizes, weights, and orientations but uses only the letters in the names of her animals (often repeatedly) to create 36 portraits—each on its own spread and rendered in a different, vivid color scheme. Presented in no discernible order, the animals, ranging from frog to koala, with elk, crab, and Afghan hound, among others, in between, are all composed of elaborate swirls and cascades, from which viewers are invited to pick out the letters with help from typographically consonant captions. While the pictures alone are an eyeful, the rhymed quatrains that accompany each add not only further letter-related prompts, but fresh washes of wit: “The hues of a chameleon / Depend on what she’s kneeling on.” (The emu’s reference to being on a “coat-of-arms” may confuse readers on this end of the Pacific, but a closing page of typographical and natural-history notes, in very tiny type, includes an explanation.) Budding letter detectives who’ve honed their skills on similarly themed outings such as Roberto de Vicq de Cumptich’s magisterial Bembo’s Zoo (2000) or Michael Arndt’s clever Cat Says Meow (2014) will still find their work cut out for them here.
A fresh tribute to the creative possibilities of letter-form art: stylish and sophisticated. (Picture book/poetry. 6-9)Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-9924917-9-6
Page Count: 72
Publisher: Melbournestyle Books/Trafalgar
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
A gleeful game for budding naturalists.
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
BOOK REVIEW
A refreshing dive past some of our world’s marine wonders.
Denizens of the deep crowd oversized pages in this populous gallery of ocean life.
The finny and tentacled sea creatures drifting or arrowing through Zommer’s teeming watercolor seascapes are generally recognizable, and they are livened rather than distorted by the artist’s tendency to place human eyes on the same side of many faces, Picasso-like. Headers such as “Ink-teresting” or “In for the krill” likewise add a playful tone to the pithy comments on anatomical features or behavioral quirks that accompany the figures (which include, though rarely, a white human diver). The topical spreads begin with an overview of ocean families (“Some are hairy, some have scales, some have fins and some are boneless and brainless!”), go on to introduce select animals in no particular order from sea horses and dragonets to penguins and pufferfish, then close with cautionary remarks on chemical pollution and floating plastic. The author invites readers as they go to find both answers to such questions as “Why does a crab run sideways?” and also a small sardine hidden in some, but not all, of the pictures. For the latter he provides a visual key at the end, followed by a basic glossary.
A refreshing dive past some of our world’s marine wonders. (index) (Informational picture book. 6-9)Pub Date: June 5, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-500-65119-3
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Thames & Hudson
Review Posted Online: April 24, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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