8: An Animal Alphabet

This is a truly wonderful book for children and adults to share or for children to peruse on their own. Each page has attractive watercolor pictures of several animals that begin with the same letter of the alphabet. The twist is that there is one animal that has eight pictures. This turns the typical alphabet book into an alphabet book cum counting book. It's trickier than it sounds, too. On the O page, there are eight otters, but some are river otters and some are sea otters. In other cases some of the eight animals are babies and others are adults. Sometimes there is one crawling on the big letter at the top of the page or somewhere else unexpected. Additionally, some of the animals are ones I had never heard of such as the upupa and quoll. The pictures of the animals are not labelled, but their names are listed at the bottom of the page. It's up to you to figure out which one is which. You are helped in this project by a 4-page "Did you know?" section at the back that shows a small picture of each animal and gives a fun fact about each. Example: Elk: Elk antlers grow about an inch a day during the summer. I can imagine that this book will be a candidate for re-reading and re-reading, noticing new things each time.

He loves this book, he draws pictures from the book

Thank you.

Purchased this book to help my grandson learn the alphabet and sound out letters. Great for providing interest in the alphabet.

SUMMARY: On each page animals are illustrated and listed for each letter of the alphabet. For an extra challenge, there are 8 of one of the animals to seek and find. In the back of the book is a short "encyclopedia" listing the animals with a one sentence fact for each one. ILLUSTRATIONS: The illustrations were created with paint. Unfortunately, they did not lend themselves well to the busy layout of this book. The animals are a little bit muddy. Add to that an ENTIRE page full of animals and it becomes very challenging to find each named animal. The pages are also lacking in color which decreases visual interest. THE GOOD: This is a different type of ABC book. It is more of a seek and find and encyclopedia combined. At the bottom of each page is a list of the animals for that letter and you must seek each animal on the page. Plus, there are 8 of one of the animals to seek and count. Why 8? Because it is the author's favorite number. This book would be good for grades 1-2 classrooms and used with an animal unit. It is an opportunity to learn a large amount of new animal vocabulary. Children who need a challenge or who love animals will enjoy this book. THE NOT AS GOOD: As stated above, the pages are very very busy. For the littlest ones trying to learn their ABCs or for pre-readers, this is very challenging. Many of the animals are not common animals so this is not a quick read-a-loud, but rather a learning opportunity that will take several sittings to get through. I did not know some of the animals and would have to look them up before being able to point them out to a child (such as a quoll, uakari, and kakapo). AGE RECOMMENDATION: Advertised for ages 3-5, but lends itself better if used as an encyclopedia of animals for grades 1-2. If used for ages 3-5, I recommend using it for learning time rather than story time.

I had high hopes for this book but was sorely disappointed. I was not a fan of the blurry watercolor illustrations. What's with all the new children's books using watercolor illustration?? Had this book had real pictures, it would get 5 stars! Great concept of a book; but, for a picture book about animals, we would like to see realistic pictures of the animals!

A gift and we are told the recipient loves it.

Grandchildren love it.