Hardcover children’s book about ‘dangerous’ animals.
I’m liking
Good quality hard-cover binding, Lots of engaging, bright pictures which my 2 year old loves. Good use of colour and font. The actual information about each animal in the book is quite good.
Things that made me go hmmmm
In a book entitled ’50 Deadliest Creatures’, I expected all the creatures to be at least capable of being deadly to humans. Sadly, at least a quarter of them are only deadly if you happen to be plankton, or some other small being. I get the impression, reading the book, that the original intent was a book entitled ‘Top 50 Scariest Creatures’; the animals are ranked according to ‘scariness’, and at the end of the book the reader is encouraged to think about what makes an animal scary, and compile their own list of scary animals. I can definitely see how all of the creatures in the book rank as Scary – the ones that are completely harmless are enormous or freaky in some way – but by choosing the title that they have, I spent the whole book thinking “that’s not deadly”, “that’s not deadly”, “that’s only deadly if you’re allergic to it”, “what makes this one deadly?!”
The conclusion
Although the information actually contained about the animals in this book is correct and interesting, and the pictures are great, the book belongs in the ‘trying to sell books by being overly sensationalist’ category. The book will appeal to highly visual children, with its strong use of colour and photos, but because of the context, and the branding of them as Deadly Creatures, the child who spends more time looking at the pictures than reading the words could come away believing harmless creatures such as the basking and whale sharks to be ‘Deadly’. Having said that, our family have quite enjoyed the book and, after discussing ‘deadly’ versus ‘scary’ have enjoyed leafing through it and discovering new things together.
On the whole, there are better animal books on the market.
