A Parliament of Owls

by Devin Scillian, Sam Caldwell (Illustrator)

Overview

From a mischief of mice and a shiver of sharks to a caravan of camels and a rhumba of rattlesnakes, animals from around the globe gather a group and sashay, swim, slither, or sail through this party of animal plurals. The only question is "What to call this animal arcade? This critter convention? This zigzag zoo? This purring and preening parade?" A delightful and colorful romp through the perfection of animal plurals from the author of Memoirs of a Goldfish!

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781534111448
Publisher:	Sleeping Bear Press
Publication date:	07/15/2022
Pages:	32
Sales rank:	423,791
Product dimensions:	10.00(w) x 10.00(h) x (d)
Lexile:	760L (what's this?)
Age Range:	6 - 7 Years

Editorial Reviews

2022-04-13
Readers learn the collective nouns for groups of animals in this picture book.

Rollicking rhymes introduce each group: “A parliament of owls was the first to arrive. / They perched in a tree up high. / A tower of giraffes glided in next, / their heads nearly touching the sky.” A light-skinned child with a cloud of red hair sits in a tree clutching a camera, but readers will only learn the reason for the gathering at the end. Animals from all habitats, from earth, sky, and water, all answer the call of this child: a prickle of porcupines, a barrel of monkeys, a cauldron of bats, a raft of otters, a rhumba of rattlesnakes, a shiver of sharks, and even a culture of bacteria are among them. And what to call this final huge group of diverse animals? The child has the perfect collective noun. The jaunty rhymes briefly lose their way, turning more toward a list and losing a bit of the bouncy rhythm. The cartoon animals ham it up, many times exhibiting anthropomorphic behavior (one crow surveys the reader murderously, some pandas walk on two legs, and the dazzle of zebras almost look like they are in a conga line). While unrealistic in the animal world, the ending could speak to an ideal for the human world to aspire to, especially in our current times. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

As colorful and raucous a collection of animals as ever was. (Informational picture book. 3-8)

Kirkus Reviews