8: An Animal Alphabet

This is a truly wonderful book for children and adults to share or for children to peruse on their own. Each page has attractive watercolor pictures of several animals that begin with the same letter of the alphabet. The twist is that there is one animal that has eight pictures. This turns the typical alphabet book into an alphabet book cum counting book. It's trickier than it sounds, too. On the O page, there are eight otters, but some are river otters and some are sea otters. In other cases some of the eight animals are babies and others are adults. Sometimes there is one crawling on the big letter at the top of the page or somewhere else unexpected. Additionally, some of the animals are ones I had never heard of such as the upupa and quoll. The pictures of the animals are not labelled, but their names are listed at the bottom of the page. It's up to you to figure out which one is which. You are helped in this project by a 4-page "Did you know?" section at the back that shows a small picture of each animal and gives a fun fact about each. Example: Elk: Elk antlers grow about an inch a day during the summer. I can imagine that this book will be a candidate for re-reading and re-reading, noticing new things each time.

He loves this book, he draws pictures from the book

Purchased this book to help my grandson learn the alphabet and sound out letters. Great for providing interest in the alphabet.

Thank you.

A gift and we are told the recipient loves it.

Grandchildren love it.

I had high hopes for this book but was sorely disappointed. I was not a fan of the blurry watercolor illustrations. What's with all the new children's books using watercolor illustration?? Had this book had real pictures, it would get 5 stars! Great concept of a book; but, for a picture book about animals, we would like to see realistic pictures of the animals!

I was disappointed by the book. The illustrations just have all of the animals on a passion page. I expected to see them illustrated in their habitats. It is really not a very attractive book.