★ 08/01/2022
Gr 2–6—Exuberant, busy, and brightly colored full-page illustrations show a variety of creatures who "sip, slurp, suck." Insects, birds, sea life, and animals are drawn with exaggerated features and expressions that give them a cartoonish appearance. The poems are printed directly, but unobtrusively, on the illustrations in a fun font. Most of the poems are bouncy rhymes, with a concrete poem and a haiku also included. Common and uncommon creatures are explored. Lampreys are described: "It looks like a flower, with petals of gold. Keratin fillings. Oh—beauty—behold! Get set to go nearer, through ocean and muck. Does that flower smell pretty? 'Tis a pity. Oops. Suck." Prologue and epilogue poems tie the theme together. End notes include an explanation on why animals suck, additional resources, anatomical terms for body parts that suck, informational paragraphs on each creature featured in the book, and a glossary of scientific terms. With a book talk or a display, it will be a hit in libraries or classrooms. VERDICT A delightful book that amuses and educates. Strong first purchase recommendation.—Tamara Saarinen
2022-06-08
Introductions to 13 creatures you (mostly) wouldn’t want on your leg.
In a not-exactly-unexpected follow-up to 2019’s Eek! You Reek! Poems About Animals That Stink, Stank, Stunk, the veteran mother-daughter team works up a series of short animal poems (16, counting one on the rear cover), supplemented by quick nature notes in the backmatter, on an equally crowd-pleasing theme. As the roster includes butterflies, honeybees, elephants, and glancing mention but no picture of unweaned human infants, not all the creatures here will dial the gross-o-meter up to 11—but there are still sufficient suckers and lappers of blood, ranging from fleas and mosquitoes to vampire bats, lampreys, and leeches, to gleefully put anyone off their lunch. The creepiest critter here may well be the erebid moth: “Oh, / tear drinker, / bird’s eye / your / cup. / With your long / proboscis, / you slurp / tears / up!” And if those eyes are dry, the supplementary comment notes, “the moth will scratch its host’s eyes until there is a weepy feast.” Eww. Nobati leaves out the gore but otherwise does her part to crank up the jollity by, for instance, giving many of the comically caricatured creatures on view googly popped eyes, depicting a lamprey bringing its own ketchup to a group suck, and showing a light-skinned human leg in thigh-deep water positively swathed in leeches. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Not quite as riotously entertaining as the previous outing, but it does the job. (glossary, reading list) (Informational picture book/poetry. 6-12)
