What's Your Favorite Animal

What’s Your Favorite Animal by Eric Carle (and friends)

Illustrator: Eric Carle and Illustrators featured in text

Publisher: Henry Holt and Co

Date of Publication: January 2014

ISBN #: 9780805096415

Pages: 40

Theme: Animals

Format: Print, Nonfiction

Ages: 0-7

Eric Carle is a master at creating fun illustrations that both children and parents know and love. In his latest, What’s Your Favorite Animal? beloved children authors and artists like Rosemary Wells and Nick Bruel share their favorite animals in this beautifully illustrated and wacky book.

Eric Carle is known for writing and illustrating many famed children’s book that we all have grown to love. His most famous works include titles like The Hungry Caterpillar and The Grouchy Ladybug along with many others. Known for silly stories about animals and his vibrant and colorful use and style in his illustrations, Carle is perhaps the most well known children’s illustrator to date.

In a collaboration with many other children’s illustrators both old and new, Carle combines the love of illustration by bringing together beloved authors/illustrators and depicting their favorite animals. “The contributions range from meticulously rendered artwork to quick, funny sketches, along with commentaries that can be elegiac, nostalgic, silly, and even meta.” (Publisher’s Weekly) Authors like Lucy Cousins and Mo Willems come together and share their favorite animals in what will hopefully become a classic and a book that children will grow to love and learn more about some of our favorite children’s illustrators. The School Library Journal describes this lovely collection as, “This successful collaboration of old favorites and newer names in illustration is sure to keep youngsters engaged and may inspire them to write about and draw their favorite animals or to take a closer look at other works by Carle and his friends.” If there’s one thing that sticks out about children’s books (especially picture books), children remember stories by the pictures on a page. Talking about illustration and learning about different illustrators is definitely important and it helps parents and educators understand what kind of style of drawing kids may like. 

The main theme in this book is learning about animals through beautifully depicted illustrations by some of our favorite illustrators, it includes an array of different animals including elephants, cats and even snails. Learning the different kinds of animals and different styles of drawing, this is a great way to introduce reading to preschool age kids and in library story times focusing on animals. If there’s anything we know about kids, they love learning about different kinds of animals. This would be a great source to use in a story time focusing on animals or learning about different drawing techniques.

I grew up reading and rereading The Hungry Caterpillar and The Grouchy Ladybug, they were just really simple and fun books. What I remember loving about Carle’s work was his illustrations, they were simple and fun. His work didn’t necessarily need to  include a written story to accompany the drawings, his work would have done just as well being wordless books. He’s a great author and illustrator to introduce to children at a young age. 

(images via google)