D'Aulaires' Book of Animals (New York Review Books (Hardcover))

My 15 month old grandson loves this book. He's enthralled by the amazing artistry.

The d'Aulaires were best known for their biographies for children (Leif the Lucky, Benjamin Franklin, Pocahontas, and others) as well as their collections of Norse and Greek myths. We recently found Book of Animals back in print on Amazon and I shouldn't have bought it because of my budget but Brad has really enjoyed this book. The pages fold out as a panorama longer than I am tall. One side is in color and has simple text spreading north to south and explaining what different animals like best about their climate. The reverse side is a black and white sketch of equal length mainly covering the sounds the same animals make but showing them more in action. Again the text is simple:The Polar Bear growls.The Whale blows, and he is the biggest of al the animals on land and in the sea.The Gull cries.The Sea Elephant roars.The Walrus snores.The Eiderduck squawks.The Seal barks.The text continues heading south (geographically).What I like about this book is that it is a springboard. We can look through it and move on to the globe showing where these animals live. We can use it to launch us into poetry about different animals, or books about them. The simple drawings are not intimidating and encourage children to draw their own. From this simple book and a little discussion, "school" flows naturally into other projects.The illustrations are fun and engaging for all ages, simple in a childlike sense and yet realistic enough not to lead small minds astray. It's also a great "activity" discussion book between an older child and a younger sibling.The only down side is that the text is so simple as to be easily outgrown. It would have been nice if there had been some animals fact pages or verse included at the end of the book (considering the d'Aulaires originally prepared this work for their own young son the lack is understandable -- it was designed for delight and not for the single purpose of meeting the needs of educators), but as long as you are willing to use it as a springboard and pull in other sources as your child gets older, it is still a living book that allows one to lead children to other imformation without becoming dry and textbookish in one's approach to learning.

This is a lovely book, in an interesting format (one fold-out page). However, it's one of those things that doesn't seem to have a great target age group, it might be good for kids with certain personalities/ways of engaging with books, but by no means all. I got it for a 5y/o who is learning to read and just went to the zoo for the first time. He is kind of too old, and too into "action" stories, for just looking at pictures of animals and talking about it. But he is also too young to handle this delicate book gently on his own without supervision. Also, because of the very long fold out page, this is not good for reading at bed time. Maybe we would enjoy it more if we had it spread out on the table and could pore over it. It is a very nice product, I just don't know who would best benefit from using it.

My 3 year old granddaughter loves animals and love the illustrations.

Beautiful illustrations. My 7-year-old animal lover enjoys sitting and looking at the animals.

The art work in this book is absolutely beautiful. So much so that I would not give the book to a young child, only an older child, I would say 10 and over in order to appreciate it and take proper care of it. The magical thing about it is that pages are all connected and fold out to make a long picture and on the opposite side are pictures of the same animals but only in black and white and it tells what kind of noises the animals make.

This book is very unique! It folds out and has been a joy to look at with my two youngest!

My great grandson immediately spent the next hour looking thru the book. He loved and his great grandpa (me) had a wonderful nostalgic trip back to his childhood with one of his favorite childhood readings.