Zany Zoo [Hardcover]

William Wise (Author), Lynn Munsinger (Illustrator)

Book Description

Age Level: 5 and up | Grade Level: K and up

Welcome to the Zany Zoo!
An unusual bunch in here, It’s true, But if fun and silliness are What you seek, Turn the pages, take a peek . . .

Author William Wise and illustrator Lynn Munsinger have teamed up to bring an exotic menagerie to life. The rollicking, rhyming poems feature a wild variety of different animals, each one undeniably unique. William Wise’s playful poetry is perfectly matched by Lynn Munsinger’s hilarious watercolor illustrations highlighting each creature’s distinct personality, from Gertrude the good agouti to Sabrina the carefree snake. Together Wise and Munsinger present young readers and listeners with this delightfully Zany Zoo, captured not in a cage but on the page!

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Kindergarten-Grade 4–Panda-monium reigns in this hilarious and pun-filled book of rhymes. Deftly animated with Munsinger's distinctive pictures of animals, all 25 poems introduce a familiar phrase and painlessly stretch the vocabulary. Words such as prodigious, estuary, and purloined are presented in context with descriptive pictures that make intuiting their meaning possible. Grown-ups might find some of the humor a bit cheesy, but it is hard not to laugh when geese attempt Shakespeare and put on a truly fowl play or a real cool feline experiences social cat-astrophe when his disco duds split at the seams. However, some of the references are beyond the experience of most children. For example, when Hope the hyena, a dancer, is too scary when performing as the Sugar Plum Fairy, she is switched…to Faust/And the regions infernal. Fortunately, the text and artwork allow youngsters to enjoy the verse without completely grasping the occasional adult-oriented details. Wise also incorporates some unusual creatures into his amusing menagerie, including Yuri the yak, Gertrude the agouti, a tapir, and terns. This book is a fantastic tool for sharing literature and language with a humorous and dramatic flare. It's sure to appeal to a wide audience.–Piper L. Nyman, formerly at Fairfield Civic Center Library, CA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

K-Gr. 2. Exuberant wordplay fuels this animal-themed collection of light verse (classified as fiction rather than poetry), in which seabirds demonstrate that "one good tern deserves another," a watermelon-loving dog is a "melon collie," and a skunk smelling of cologne discovers that "it pays to have good scents." Many of the 25 poems are built around an old saying, offering an amusing introduction to figures of speech, especially when an adult is nearby to explain unfamiliar phrases. Children may also need help with Wise's frequently sophisticated references (there's a "playboy" who is also a "bon vivant," and one punch line mentions Faust). A few selections give more substantive pause: at one point, the term lazy sinner is used more flippantly than will be comfortable to many readers. However, as in the author and illustrator's previous collaboration, Dinosaurs Forever (2000), Munsinger will keep kids riveted with her goofy, anthropomorphic illustrations, and the chanting rhythms and spot-on rhymes will perk up listeners even when the humor misses the bull's-eye. Jennifer Mattson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 5 and up
  
• Hardcover: 32 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Books for Children; First Printing edition (March 27, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0618188916
• ISBN-13: 978-0618188918
• Product Dimensions: 11.2 x 9.5 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,337,382 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Read it again and again, March 23, 2007

By 

jackie McKenna "stay at home mom" (O Fallon IL) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Zany Zoo (Hardcover)

The librarian at school picked this for my son, he wasn't happy at all about it. Now I think we need to send her a thank you note. We've read it every night before bed for a whole week. That's a first. I love this book, my son loves this book. Read it, you will love it too.

2.0 out of 5 stars Fun-ish to read but words too big for children, June 19, 2009

By 

Ashley Barrett (Utah USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Zany Zoo (Paperback)

I have a Bachelor's degree and still couldn't understand every word in this book so there's no way that my 14 month old would understand. He got bored quickly with this book (that's a first). However it could be fun to read to an older child just don't expect them to be able to read it for quite a while. The poems were fun and a play on words.