Wild About Books by Judy Sierra (2004) is illustrated by Marc Brown. Need I say more about how this large book looks and feels? On page one, a librarian drives the bookmobile, by mistake, to the zoo. She is apparently clueless because she stays there. On page two, she’s intent on getting the zoo animals to read. And so it is that rhyme tells the tale of animals stampeding to learn about reading. The text is atop Brown’s colorful two-page spreads. “Giraffes wanted tall books and crickets craved small books…”; you get the idea. But wait, there’s more. The animals need lessons in how to care for books. The boa constrictor squeezed its book and the termites ate their book. I smiled at what happened next. The animals began to write their own stories. “…penguins wrote with their bills, And porcupines wrote with their very own quills.” The ending is even better. I won’t ruin it by giving it away.
