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Florian, Douglas

Zoobilations!: Animal Poems and Paintings

48 pp. | Simon/Beach Lane | March, 2022 | Trade ISBN 978-1-5344-6590-9 $17.99 | Ebook ISBN 978-1-5344-6591-6 $10.99
(2) K-3 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.
Reviewer: Julie Roach | Horn Book Magazine Issue: March, 2022

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