Children's Books: Zoo-ology

This is Zoo-ology by Joelle Jolivet . I gave this book to Beeper about two and half years ago and it continues to be one his all time favorites. Yes, he loves reptiles, but really his love extends to all creeds of animals. Most kids love animals, don't they? So, let me share a little bit of this beautiful book with you... First off, I love the unexpected way in which the animals are catalogued: spots and stripes... ...on the seabed......horned... ...feathered...and everything else from large and small (think elephants and caterpillars) to black and white (zebras and albatrosses) to underground (moles and dung beetles) to in the trees (koalas and gibbons) to close to us all(cats and chickens).And then there is extra information about all the animals indexed alphabetically at the back of the book. So you can learn things like that raccoons like to wash their food in a pond or stream before eating it, or that the wombat is the only marsupiall that lives in a hole. And there is some sort of chameleon hiding on every page--attempting to camoflage itself within the theme of the animals on that page...makes for extra fun to try to locate the chameleon amongst all the animals on each page
Of course, one of the main reasons I, personally, love this book is the lovely illustration of over 300 kinds of animals jumbled from page to page (I admit that I reference it from time to time when doing plushie designs and need a bit of inspiration). The loveliness is added to by the fact that the book is BIG--like the pages are 18 inches tall! Of course, with a book this lovely, you had to know that it is a french import, right? Who else, but the french, would make a children's book so gorgeous and impractically large that it captures not only your eyes, but also your heart . (and I might add the book is very reasonably priced for something so grand--less than $13 on Amazon. Find it here.)