My Animals by Xavier Deneux

My Animals by Xavier Deneux
Buy My Animals by Xavier Deneux at Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com
Category: For Sharing
Reviewer: Sue Magee
Summary: A sophisticated board book which will appeal to parents and the more thoughtful child, with its limited palette of colours. Cautiously recommended.
Buy? Maybe	Borrow? Yes
Pages: 24	Date: February 2009
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing plc
ISBN: 978-0747597100
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When I picked this book up, I wanted to stroke it, with its black velvety cover and soft white dog. There's just a splash of colour in an orange butterfly, but nothing else to distract you from the dog with the largest eyes that you have ever seen. The theme is set for a book which is mainly black and white with just the occasional splash of colour. It's chubby; perfect for small hands and with substantial board pages which will stand a lot of affectionate handling.

There's a progression through the book, with a hole through one page revealing something of the next. It's ingeniously done. A twig in the same tree as the bird is revealed on the next page to be the black mouth of a white frog, but looking backwards through another hole, the eye of the cat becomes the eye of the crocodile. It's strangely soothing to move through the book, guessing what you'll find on the next page and how one thing will be transformed into another.

It's definitely a book which will appeal to parents. There's an elegant sophistication about it with its limited palette of colours and it's a real pleasure to handle. For children it might not have staying power although it will intrigue as they see how parts of one picture reappear in another and guess how the flashes of colour will be used. It's a book I'd buy for the more thoughtful child.

The pages have a high gloss finish and the child with whom I shared this book did leave quite a few fingerprints. Happily they wiped away with a dry lens cloth and the book was none the worse for the experience. The holes in each page are well engineered. Inevitably small fingers are going to be pushed through them, but my young companion and I found no rough edges.

I'd like to thank the publishers for sending a review copy to the Bookbag.

For more sophisticated paper engineering you'll love Abc 3d by Marion Bataille but if you want a more colourful board book with cut outs we can recommend Are We Nearly There Yet? by Katherine Lodge or for a book with tabs, lift-up flaps and pop-ups why not try What's That Noise Mr Croc? by Jo Lodge? You'll also love the follow-up: My Circus by Xavier Deneux.

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You can read more book reviews or buy My Animals by Xavier Deneux at Amazon.co.uk Amazon currently charges £2.99 for standard delivery for orders under £20, over which delivery is free.
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