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Review - Animal Colors - Beth Fielding

This is a curious one. A pictures-plus-text book with page after page of creatures collected together by colour. So there's a page of red, yellow, blue and so on, then a few mixes of colour, followed by black and white, and rainbow. The trouble is I kept thinking 'And...?' Each pair of pages has a couple of big highlighted animals plus another five with a smaller photo. The accompanying text is very much simple descriptive. It just tells us some basics facts about the creature in a strangely breathless fashion. So, for the Lubber Grasshopper, for instance: 'Only lives about one year; has wings but can't fly; hisses and squirts bubbly poison at predators; birds and mammals puke if they eat it.'

It's only really in the very last section, using colour, that the book comes alive and gives us some hints as to why animals should have these colours. But it could do with less simple description and more exploration throughout. For example, how do they get the colours? Why is that particular creature that colour when a different member of the species isn't... and so on.

This certainly isn't a book with any sense of flow as you read through it - but equally it's not really a reference. The pictures are good, the animals are interesting, but as popular science for children, the book doesn't quite work.

Only in hardback

Reviewed by Jo Reed

* Our age range recommendation is an estimated guide, but individual readers outside the range could still enjoy the book!

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