Mar 6, 2011

ZooBorns

The Newest, Cutest Animals from the World's Zoos and Aquariums
by Andrew Bleiman and Chris Eastland

I first saw ZooBorns mentioned on Bermudaonion's Weblog, and thought it would be a good one to share with my daughter (who's six). So when I saw it on the library shelf, I snatched it up. The book is full of beautiful photographs of newborn and very young animals of all sorts of different species. They're just adorable! My daughter loved seeing which ones she could name (meerkat, beluga, hyena, zebra, etc) and which were entirely new to her (the aardvark, potto, marmot, echidna and tamandua in particular). The pictures are a delight, but reading the text together was another matter. Each page featuring an animal has a list of basic stats- its name, birthdate, location etc- then a bit of text describing the animal, giving some little facts about it or information on its status in the wild. Even though the passages were very short, the language was also a bit too technical for my daughter and I found myself rephrasing most of it so she could understand (she wasn't happy to just look at the pictures, but wanted to know about the animals, too). So it's not really a kid's book, even though it's so disarmingly cute- fact emphasized that I found it in the adult non-fiction section of the library. I didn't mind reworking the words a bit so she could enjoy it with me, though.

Rating: 3/5 ........ 150 pages, 2010

more opinions at:
Carol's Notebook

5 comments:

  1. Awww, it looks adorable! I would probably just be in it for the pictures -- I was at the Natural History Museum yesterday, cooing my head off at all the big-head big-eyes animals. :p

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  2. I had trouble figuring out if this book was for kids or adults, but I just loved looking at the pictures.

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  3. Anonymous3/07/2011

    Looks adorable. Sounds like one my daughter and I might enjoy looking at together. She's 11 and a total animal lover.

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  4. Its a shame they didnt take into account that with such cute pictures the book would be mistaken as something that a child would love.

    Still the pictures are adorable! I have flicked through this in the book shop.

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