Eric Carle's Animals Animals

Eric Carle's Animals Animals
by Eric Carle
Ages 2-10
Topics: Animals, poetry
ISBN#0-399-21744-4

This book is an illustrated collection of short poems about a wide range of animals and insects. The selection includes a number of haiku poems, funny poems like The Birthday Cow by Eve Merriam ("Happy Mooday to you") and Yak and Long Gone (about dinosaurs) by Jack Prelutsky, and poems by Rudyard Kipling, John Gardener, and Shakespeare.

This book is a great way to gently introduce your child to poetry. All the poems are short and Eric Carle's illustrations are rich and visually exciting. (Carle creates his fabulous collages with tissue paper that he paints with acrylic paint. He then adds texture and cuts and combines the papers to create his pictures.) The alternation of funny and silly poems with the haikus and more literary poems creates a happily varied rythmn and sustains interest. Younger children will be fascinated by the bright pictures and language play. Older children will stay interested with some of the more unusual animals like the narwhal and the platypus. The books conveys a respect for all the world's animals and would make a wonderful gift a child could enjoy for years.

Buy Eric Carle's Animals Animals from Amazon.com

For more information on Eric Carle, visit his website.

For a great book on Carle's picture book art, see The Art of Eric Carle