Thursday, August 22, 2024

*Animals should definitely not act like people (1980)

 *Animals should definitely not act like people by Judi Barrett is loads of fun. Drawings by Ron Barrett capture the silliness implied in the text. Each page shows a creature attempting a human activity. A worm uses both end of its wriggly body to hold up a dumbell, an octopus wears four baseball gloves, and a hippopotamus has a bathtub stuck to it's rear end. That hippo would "have to have a heap of help" to use a human bathtub! Each illustration is accompanied by a lot of alliteration. I love the giraffe standing at the top of a ladder attempting to paint its house. The last picture is startling. A variety of animals peer into a cage as if they are visitors in a zoo--and the reader is in the cage. 

Madeline Finn and the Library Dog (2016)

  Madeline Finn and the Library Dog by Lisa Papp (2016) has cover art that previews what's inside the book. Papp's illustration styl...