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. 

The Santa Clauses (1986)

The Santa Clauses retold by Achim Broger is a cute story of a young boy who saves Christmas. In this story, the little guy learns that ther...