This collection of poems revolves around different animals. The poems tend to be more about general character and behavior rather than scientific. The poetry and water color illustrations targets this collection at primary students.
This poetry collection could be powerful for students who are working on animal reports. Students could read through this to find which animal they want to write about or could use the poems as part of a presentation.

This anthology contains over ninety poems having to do with animals. Some are by famous poets and writers such as Rudyard Kipling, Henry Longfellow, Roald Dahl, Emily Brontë, Lewis Carroll and John Keats. Others are by modern poets. The poems are organized by sections according to the type of animals the poems are about: pets, farm animals, insects, wild animals, animals in zoos, sea animals, etc. The illustrations are done by seven illustrators. The styles of the illustrations varies greatly, but they usually all have bright hues, which should be appealing to children. Most illustrations are very expressive, and are nice complements to the poems they accompany. However, a few poems are not illustrated, and the blanks on the page are glaring, especially for a book that is meant for younger children. Even some pages with pictures could have been more colorful, with at least a background color instead of white all around, and only a little picture on the page.

Most of the poems are very readable, and they would make great read-alouds. A majority of the poems are cheerful, cute and funny, but some are more somber in tone, especially (and understandably so) in the section about zoo animals. In particular, one poem about a zoo polar bear poignantly captures his sad and monotonous life, as does one about a caged parrot, and another one about a circus elephant. Some of the poems also express broader concern over the future of the animal world, such as “Noah’s Arks” by Pat Moon. Overall, this is a good collection, and it would be particularly engaging to any child who likes animals. Ages 4 to 10. ( )