Cute baby animal pictures with some fun facts.

What is more precious than showing children pictures of baby animals. This is the final book I read with my grandchildren in the Baby Animals series. It highlights ten different animal families with their parents showing them doing various things. The animals vary in geography as well as some being well-known and others not being as familiar such as a topi or sloth. The illustrations are beautiful photographs taken by Suzi Eszterhas, who is a wildlife photographer and animal activist. All the photos in this book are of baby animals and their families in the wild, with exceptions of some at the back of the book as added material. The text included are short anecdotes describing what is happening in the pictures as well as identifying the animals. This is a great read aloud story for young children, probably best 4 and up. I read this with both of my grandchildren and they were arguing because my 2.5 year old granddaughter kept turning the pages as she just wanted to look at the pictures, and my 5 year old grandson wanted to listen to the text and talk about the animals shown. As Suzi Eszterhas says at the end of the book, "I think it's important for kids to connect with animals and nature. You can do this by looking at photos, reading books, or just going outside with your family to play and explore your world, like these baby animals." This is a great non-fiction book to add to school and family libraries. A good book for any animal lover. The publisher, Owlkids Books, generously provided me with a copy of this book upon my request. The rating, ideas and opinions shared are my own. ( )

Young children love photographic works and Eszterhas’s skill with the camera is extraordinary; it never fails to please. Here she focuses on some of the groups animals (including birds) grow up in. The shapes and sizes of these groups provide unique survival benefits for different animals, and wild creatures have different ways of communicating within them. For instance, in albatross colonies, the birds have distinct calls so family members can be recognized. Elephants greet friends and relatives with their trunks.

Eszterhas covers some familiar animals—such as lions, chimps, cheetahs, and polar bears—but some less commonly known ones also appear in her book: Topi (a subspecies of antelope), bat-eared foxes, and ring-tailed lemurs.

Her accessible, kid-friendly text is limited to about three sentences per double-paged spread. New collective noun vocabulary is introduced: pride, herd, troop (for lemurs) and tower (for giraffes).

This is a lovely little, “just-right” book for young readers. ( )