Zoobilations!
by Douglas Florian; illus. by the author
Primary    Beach Lane/Simon    48 pp.    g
3/22    978-1-5344-6590-9    $17.99
e-book ed.  978-1-5344-6591-6    $10.99

Florian returns to the zoo (zoo’s who, rev. 5/05) with twenty new pithy and jubilant poems about animals. Some of the poems are peppered with interesting facts, such as “The African Elephant”: “Each tusk can weigh / more than a man / (and measure just as long).” Occasionally a standalone couplet creates the space for sheer silliness: “I wanted to write a poem on an antelope. / But I cantaloupe.” Each of the poems incorporates clever wordplay to create an ultimate punch line, while Florian’s characteristically rough-textured art, with its thick ­crayonlike lines and deep colors, plays up the joke. The illustration accompanying “The Midwife Toad” shows a male toad loaded down with eggs on his back and with a “World’s Best Dad” hat on his head. “The Hammerhead Shark” declares, “I hunt for squid or bass or ray– / my hammer head nails down my prey,” and the illustration depicts a shark using its head to hammer some nails into a board. The wide range of creatures—from centipedes and seagulls to mandrills and flying foxes—offers young readers familiar specimens as well as some less well-known ones. Florian’s experimentation with word meanings and usage models how to have fun with writing, imagery, and verse.

From the March/April 2022 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.