Bert Kitchen

This picture book is beautifully illustrated with meticulously detailed paintings of twelve mammals, birds, fish, and insects that build structures. At each opening is a full page illustration on the right page and text on the left. Each "story" starts out by stating the animal and the reason "and so they build" in a very large font, and continues in smaller print with information about the animal, its location, how it constructs its building project and other interesting data. As such it's show more very well suited to read around to a child: an early reader might manage much of the large print intro and whether early or pre-readers, the parent can easily stop reading when the child's attention span is reached. Of course, the highly detailed illustrations also give the child a lot to explore on their own. A very good addition to the family "picture science" shelf. show less

So many beautiful animal facts books out there. How to choose? Well, I'd say, choose one with a theme, or with plenty of information, or plenty of animals, or addendum maps.... This is pretty, but skimpy and random. The only thing I learned was about the dormouse - no wonder Alice and the Mad Hatter observed it sleeping so much - Kitchen says it's dormant for up to nine months of the year!

Some gorgeous art, but the verses are basically just captions. There's no plot, but only a theme of 'animals in things.' Some are matter-of-fact, and others are almost surreal. I'd give the text one star, and the book as a whole 3 *if* the majority of the pictures were not only lovely but interesting....

I read the copy that is archived on OpenLibrary.org. I think it's pretty enough that if you can get a copy from your library, check it out. It does go 1-10, then 15, 25, 50, 100 (or something like that). *Very* simple main text, but includes animal facts in the back.