Gobble, Growl, Grunt

This is another unusual book like Crash! Bang! Boom!, but this time devoted to animal sounds. From humpback elephants ("taa-taaah") to dolphins ("ih-ih-ih-ih"), rattlesnakes ("ticka-ticka-tick") to rats ("squeal"), each animal is wonderfully rendered in Spier's inimitable style -- then labeled, and given a sound to make in concert with about 15-30 others on each two-page spread. This is a good book for early readers, who will benefit from the enjoyable phonetic practice of sounding out the animal noises. Confident readers may enjoy it even more, especially if they can share the experience with friends who enjoy imitating animals. Pre-readers will enjoy having it read aloud and may have fun imitating the animals, but parents should be forewarned that it can be rather tiring to read aloud. The book is unfortunately out of print, but is available on the used market.

On every page of this book, children will find a great mix of animals squawking, squealing, honking, tweeting, croaking, trumpeting, screeching, barking, purring, roaring, yipping, and bleating. The animals are depicted in many various situations. For example, the bears are eating and one is running away from bees. Kids will love looking at all the pictures and imitating the sounds as written. A perfect book for those children who are enamoured with animals.