Zoobilations! Animal poems and paintings

Douglas Florian

Book - 2022

A collection of poems celebrating animals, from weasels to hammerhead sharks.

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Subjects
Genres
Poetry
Picture books
Published
New York : Beach Lane Books 2022
Language
English
Main Author
Douglas Florian (author)
Edition
First edition
Physical Description
40 unnumbered pages : color illustrations ; 24 cm
Audience
Ages 0-8.
Grades 2-3.
ISBN
9781534465909
Contents unavailable.
Review by Booklist Review

The latest offering from the grizzled wizard of wordplay presents 20 creatures, from llamas, who "llove to graze on grass" and "have a llot of mass," to giraffes that "eat the leaves / of tallest trees / most all giraffe-ternoon." In verses running from just a couplet to a dozen or so lines each, Florian intersperses snippets of natural history with imaginative flights of fancy, putting centipedes and millipedes on bicycles to admire how fast they "centi-pedal," or setting an unhappy circus elephant to dreams of flying in "ele-fantasies." The poems are paired with likewise freewheeling portraits that treat viewers to sights ranging from a naked mole rat trying on a pair of shorts to a hammerhead shark pounding nails into a board, all rendered in scribbly preschooler style (though he does stay inside the lines, barely) with crayons or pastels on paper bags. It's beastly fun, as usual, whether read silently or bellowed aloud.

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Horn Book Review

Florian returns to the zoo (zoo's who, rev. 5/05) with twenty new pithy and jubilant poems about animals. Some of the poems are peppered with interesting facts, such as "The African Elephant": "Each tusk can weigh / more than a man / (and measure just as long)." Occasionally a standalone couplet creates the space for sheer silliness: "I wanted to write a poem on an antelope. / But I cantaloupe." Each of the poems incorporates clever wordplay to create an ultimate punch line, while Florian's characteristically rough-textured art, with its thick crayonlike lines and deep colors, plays up the joke. The illustration accompanying "The Midwife Toad" shows a male toad loaded down with eggs on his back and with a "World's Best Dad" hat on his head. "The Hammerhead Shark" declares, "I hunt for squid or bass or ray / my hammer head nails down my prey," and the illustration depicts a shark using its head to hammer some nails into a board. The wide range of creatures -- from centipedes and seagulls to mandrills and flying foxes -- offers young readers familiar specimens as well as some less well-known ones. Florian's experimentation with word meanings and usage models how to have fun with writing, imagery, and verse. Julie Roach March/April 2022 p.(c) Copyright 2022. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.