AmySea

I took my niece and nephew to the library today, and my niece spotted this one on the shelf. She became very excited and told me how great the book was. We checked it out, and the three of us read this together.

The book was very similar to Behold the Bold Umbrellaphant : And Other Poems, but I think the kids enjoyed this one considerably more. The illustrations were more engaging, and made strong use of the background as well as the foreground. Creatures we had just visited, or were to visit on the next page appeared in the background, and I think that helped the kids stay anticipatory as we read along.

The poetry was quite good, too, with very few, if any, awkward lines. It was full of great vocabulary, but also accessible to the kids. My niece and nephew are not big poetry fans, so frankly, I was surprised by how much they seemed to enjoy the poems in Scranimals. I did stumble over the names of some of the creatures in this book, but the author did provide pronunciation keys, which helped quite a bit.

Overall, this was an interesting book, and I get why my niece was excited about it. I'm glad the kids enjoyed it, but I am also glad I don't have to pronounce some of those difficult creature names on a regular basis.