How Loud is a Lion?

by Clare Beaton

By far the outstanding thing about this little board book is the illustrations. They're made out of fabrics and stitches and little beads all put together in shapes and patterns to make pictures of animals. It's just amazing and full of wonderful textures. The story itself describes different attributes of animals in pairs: Antelopes are elegant, elephants are enormous and each phrase ends with But how loud is a lion? you turn the page and find more animals, still wondering about the lion... If you look closely there are signs of the lion among the romping chimpanzees and running gazelle: a tail here, pawprints there, eyes peeking through a bush. You're going along with a nice rhythm, meeting familiar hippos and exotic-sounding zorillas when you turn the page and suddenly ROARR!!! (all the animals flee in panic). Then on the very last page is a big happy lion, looking very pleased with himself for having scared everyone, ha ha. My kid always jumps at the roar, it's so funny. She's not old enough to look for the lion hiding on each page, but it entertains me while I'm reading for the umpteenth time.

My only little quibble is that where is says Cheetahs are spotty, the animal pictured looks like a leopard, and it's reclining in a tree! I know this is an easy mistake- my older daughter's school makes it, for example. Their mascot is a jaguar, yet the huge rubber entrance mat features a sprinting cheetah. I've also seen cheetahs on their letterhead! It annoys me a little bit, but oh well.

I do really love this book. I know I saw another one with same style of illustrations when my first daughter was small, but now I can't recall the title or even what it was about...

rating: 4/5 ........ 24 pages, 2002

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