Let's read animal words

PreS-Gr 3--In this concept book using letters to represent animals, each page features a bold, colorful illustration on a clean white background. Accompanying each illustration is a line or two of text noting a fact about the animal, and in many cases, a related question to ponder. "Pandas spend ten to sixteen hours a day eating bamboo. What's your favorite food?" The graphic style is spare, allowing the letters to take center stage, whether they are upside down, stretched, or conjoined, in order to form each animal. While the minimalistic nature of the visuals will make this book abstract for the youngest in the age group for which it's intended, this book will be fun to share with younger elementary children, who will enjoy searching and finding each letter, and talking about which letters portray which body part. They can guess the animal from the visual, and then work to pick apart the picture letter by letter. VERDICT An additional purchase for public and school libraries.--Jennifer Noonan

Letters become animal art in this fact-filled picture book. A lowercase letter h forms the shape of a horse's body; an uppercase O, R, and S form the mane, with the tail made up of an upper-case E. Each animal is designed in this style, the letters twisted or flipped. For each animal, Lee includes a concise fact. While a few of these tidbits are refreshingly new ("Sea lions can get lost without their whiskers"), many will be familiar to even young readers ("Ostriches are the largest bird in the world, but they can't fly"). A few questions are sprinkled throughout, which make for nice pauses in the text: "Flamingos are pink because of the food they eat. If you ate lots of broccoli, would you become green?" Most of the letter-formed animals appear against an all-white background, with a few exceptions. The letter R is cleverly turned upside down forming a rabbit's ears, but as a part of the rhino, it's flipped on its side as the horn. The stretched and rotated letters might confuse pre-readers familiar with the alphabet, so adult readers beware: This is by no means a book to help little ones learn their ABCs. But the alphabet as art is compelling, and it functions more like a game than actual reading, especially for little readers. (This book was reviewed digitally.) An inspired and visually creative take on the ABCs. (Picture book. 4-6) Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.