Arf! Buzz! Cluck! A rather noisy alphabet

Toddler-PreS-A cacophony of calls greets listeners in this cheerful concept book that highlights the signature sounds of three or four familiar creatures on each spread. ("We Quack, we Ribbit, we Sing, we Squeak!"). Unnamed, but easily recognizable cartoon critters, offer children and adults an opportunity to extend the fun by identifying each animal. © Copyright 2019. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

A beastly cacophony of read-aloud fun from A to Z.This "rather noisy alphabet" invites a spirited, call-and-response reading from caregivers and young children, who can brush up on their animal sounds and their ABCs at the same time. Rendered in cartoonish but friendly fashioneven the loud, growling tiger wears a big, warm grina variety of animals squeak, chirp, and howl their way through this unevenly rhymed but generally appealing board book. The action plays out over a series of two-page scenes in settings that range from barnyard to brook to forest to glacier to African veldt. Great poetry the text is not, but it is serviceable at least most of the time: "We Arf, we Buzz, we Baaah, we Coo. / We Chirp and Cluck and cock-a-doodle Doo!" Each featured letter of the alphabet is capitalized in context, even when it's not the first letter of the word, as in, "we eXitedly twitter." Most of the rhymes flow pretty smoothly, although the text does, on occasion, abandon meter to an awkward and confusing degree: "On Ice we bark, in water we Jump, on snow we Kiss / We Lick, we Laugh, we snap like this." Most of the featured sounds are utterances, although a few describe an animal's locomotion ("Vrooom" and "Zoom," for example).Not perfect but maybe just right for a raucous reading or 12. (Board book. 1-4) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.