From School Library Journal
Kindergarten-Grade 3—When attendance at the zoo is dwindling and visitors are bored, the director decides to close the facility. The animals are worried until the peacocks come up with a solution: jazz up their appearance. "Forget what you used to be,/forget what you were,/instead, let's paint patterns/on our skins and our fur." Chameleon uses his tongue to paint blue swirls on Orangutan. Mother Moose is no longer boring brown, but is covered with a blue geometric pattern. Hippo becomes "paisley-pot-a-miss." The "Art-imals" generate new enthusiasm among the visitors, who never yawn again. The bouncy verse is usually fast paced, but occasionally stumbles as it describes the children's sudden disinterest and the animals' subsequent change. The clean, delicate paintings expand the textual descriptions. Readers will appreciate the transformed creatures, finding new details with each reading. On some pages the text is printed on the background, while on others it appears in boxes to the side of the pictures. The result is visually uneven and somewhat disjointed. Certain parts sparkle with creativity, but as a whole, the book lacks polish.—
Carolyn Janssen, Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County, OH Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Review
Come to the zoo, but no ordinary zoo. Enjoy a rhyming story where, through teamwork, the animals will save their zoo from closing. The rhymes are fun, and some are quirky, too. The animals work together to create wonderful, colorful, and amazing patterns on their fur and skin. When they finish with their amazing paint jobs, they gather together to say their new names such as paisley-pot-a-miss and busy buss-a-phant. The zoo is saved, and they declare every day Zoolidays. The expressive faces of the people are vividly seen upon the animals as they discuss their problem and work on the solution. As the story progresses the colors become vibrant and alive with patterns. Most of the rhyming words are held within its own box with plenty of white space surrounding them, nicely off-set from the drawings. Teamwork, laughter, and creativity abound within this zoo. Could these zoo animals be good role models for teamwork within the classroom, too? Recommended. --Library Media Connection, April 2007
