Animagicals: Music [Hardcover]

Carol Diggory Shields (Author), Svjetlan Junakovic (Illustrator)

Book Description

Grade Level: P and up | Series: Animagicals

Mysteriously arresting images and delightfully intriguing verse - compel readers to open the flap to reveal... an Animagical. Award-winning, best-selling poet Carol Diggory Shields matches talents with a young artist who casts a unique eye on the world, Svetlan Junakovic. The results are exuberantly witty, astonishingly unexpected, and always wonderful. Each title sports twelve spreads, twelve verses with an Ogden Nash-like whimsy, and twelve visual surprises. Deceptively simple and devilishly complex-these are books that everyone from toddlers to adults can crow about.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Originally published in Switzerland, this delightful book in the long, tall Animagicals series (see Animagicals: Colors too) will have your kids celebrating the sound of music! Twelve different interactive spreads pose witty rhyming riddles courtesy of poet Carol Diggory Shields, accompanied by Croatian artist Svjetlan Junakovic's whimsical and lovely paintings of musical instruments. Fold out the flap, and the spread extends to a surprise "animagical"--a creative morphing of instrument and animal. The first spread, for example, leads with the following riddle-rhyme: "I plod through the desert / ba-rumpity-bump. / My drums keeping time, / ka-thumpity-thump. / Bumpity, thumpity, / rumpity, thump, / I am a..." Open up the page flap, and the drums reveal themselves to be a "camel, with a drum on each hump." The book marches on through 11 more clue-filled poems. An accordion cleverly expands into a caterpillar: "My music is squeezy and / sometimes it's wheezy, / I'm just a... [turn the page] caterpillar taking it easy." A flute is played by an octopus, a French horn is a chameleon. Preschoolers will revel in the discovery of each transformation and in the easy rhythm of the riddles. Older readers will want to guess what the animal will be from the subtle clues in the text. (It's not easy!) Adults will relish the animagical nature of the whole package--the gorgeous colors, textures, and composition of Junakovic's work, along with the quirky playfulness of Shields's poetry. (Ages 3 and older) --Karin Snelson

From School Library Journal

PreSchool-Grade 2-Two whimsical books with foldout pages that introduce concepts with the help of rhyming texts and cleverly chosen animals. In the first book, each page introduces a color. Folded, it looks like one thing; unfolded, an animal is revealed. For pink, for example, the page shows a pink bow. Unfold it, and a flamingo appears. The illustrations, using sweeping brush strokes, imaginative placement, and animals full of personality, are clever in the transformation from one object to another. The same technique is used in Music, in which readers see "a camel, with a drum on each hump" or a "bagpipe-playing bullfrog." Both the rhymes and pictures have fun with the similarity in sound or look of the paired instruments and animals. These books are more sophisticated and slightly more demanding than the many other lift-the-flap books that cater to toddlers, which do not have the depth of humor or thought that these two have. A witty pair perfect for lap-time sharing, storytime, or classroom guessing.
Jane Marino, Scarsdale Public Library, NY
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 12 pages
• Publisher: Chronicle Books; 1st edition (October 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 192976605X
• ISBN-13: 978-1929766055
• Product Dimensions: 11.4 x 4.9 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,349,557 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Animagicals: Music, February 2, 2001

By 

D. J. Glasgow (Conway, AR United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Animagicals: Music (Hardcover)

I purchased two copies of this book, one for my stepdaughter who is six years old and another to place in my music studio (I am a music teacher). The pages of this little book are sturdy, like glazed cardstock. As you open to each page there is a fun little riddle, with a flap to open which gives the surprise answer. Kids love this book because it is cute and has surprises inside (it's not always easy to guess the answer!) and I love it because of its beautiful, whimsical artwork and educational value; the answers often have to do with musical instruments. Sometimes the picture itself is the surprise--what looks to be a horn turns out to be a chameleon when the flap is opened!

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Soft, pleasing and interactive, July 25, 2001

By 

Spaceman Spiff "flergum" (San Diego, CA United States) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Animagicals: Music (Hardcover)

As you may of read, the basic premise is a poem with a picture that upon unfolding a page, transforms the picture into the answer of the riddle/poem with the last line of the poem being the answer.

The pictures are soft and pleasing, the tall slender book fits in the childs arm span well and they are entranced by the fold out transformation of the picture eg. cello into a bear. Think you will enjoy it. Only problem - the pages of the book are not drool proof.