Wild Critters

great photos by Tom Walker (wonderful wildlife photographer) that both adults and children enjoy ( so reading to my nephew is just as much fun for me!) the poems by Tom walker are very catchy (but once again not annoying for an adult to read over and over and over again!)

I bought this book (along with some other children's books about Alaska) when we visited the state four summers ago. Our son was 6 at the time. Wild Critters was his (and my) favorite!It is sweetly amusing--with a photograph of a "wild critter" on one page and a short poem about it on the opposite page. A musk ox, fox, mountain goat, grizzly bear and many others are the subjects of these delightful poems. Each poem captures a quality that a young child--and the adult reading it--can relate to. For example, in a poem called "Back Seat Loonacy", the baby loon cries, " 'Are we there yet? Are we there yet?' Still the same old beat. No we are not there yet, why don't you try to eat?" My personal favorite is the poem for the Musk Ox, titled "Flower child". In part, it reads: "Few can understand me and some say I'm a slob. All they do is tell me, "Get a haircut, get a job". The titles of the poems are amusing and inviting: "Pfine pfeathered pfashion" is about the ptarmigan and "The arctic waterbed" is about the polar bear, and so on. The photographs of the animals in their natural habitats are outstanding. They are either amusing (the grizzly trying to scratch his back on a post) or endearing (a baby caribou peeking around its mother).I've emphasized the creative, delighful nature of this book, but it also teaches a small child much about the animals depicted: about how animals camouflage themselves, about how sea otters eat, about how fast a snowshoe hare can race across a field. An added surprise (which I loved because it's so subtle) is that each page number sits on a color imprint of the track of that particular animal. I highly recommend this book to parents with children ages 3 and up. Even older children taking poetry in class can enjoy the simple, clever rhymes and use them as models for their own poetry. In closing, I'll quote one of the most endearing poems--"Peekaboo caribou": "With nowhere else to go to hide from one another, I found the safest place to hide is right behind my mother". Enjoy.