Zany Zoo - Hardcover

Lynn Munsinger has illustrated more than ninety books for children, many written by her frequent collaborator, Helen Lester. She lives in Vermont.

Kindergarten-Grade 4–Panda-monium reigns in this hilarious and pun-filled book of rhymes. Deftly animated with Munsinger's distinctive pictures of animals, all 25 poems introduce a familiar phrase and painlessly stretch the vocabulary. Words such as prodigious, estuary, and purloined are presented in context with descriptive pictures that make intuiting their meaning possible. Grown-ups might find some of the humor a bit cheesy, but it is hard not to laugh when geese attempt Shakespeare and put on a truly fowl play or a real cool feline experiences social cat-astrophe when his disco duds split at the seams. However, some of the references are beyond the experience of most children. For example, when Hope the hyena, a dancer, is too scary when performing as the Sugar Plum Fairy, she is switched...to Faust/And the regions infernal. Fortunately, the text and artwork allow youngsters to enjoy the verse without completely grasping the occasional adult-oriented details. Wise also incorporates some unusual creatures into his amusing menagerie, including Yuri the yak, Gertrude the agouti, a tapir, and terns. This book is a fantastic tool for sharing literature and language with a humorous and dramatic flare. It's sure to appeal to a wide audience.–Piper L. Nyman, formerly at Fairfield Civic Center Library, CA
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