Extraordinary Animals, a durable, interactive, smart book for ages five and up

If six-year-olds were in charge of bathroom books then Extraordinary Animals would be on top of every tank. The basis behind a great toilet book is that it’s fun to read and can be consumed in nuggets. Granted, in some cases, those books graduate from the water closet to mingle with the books in the general library or for leisure reading. Ultimate Spotlight Extraordinary Animals is a book that falls in that category. It also combines interactive elements from two of our favorite series of books.

Actually, one of them is a creator of books, and that’s Matthew Reinhart. His pop-up books are so much more than the simple ones that I grew up with. They’re interactive pop-up books that go up, pull to the side, and have multiple elements on each page. The other is a series of photicular books on Workman Publishing by Dan Kainen. Although this series is not photography driven, it still has elements of the same wonder that kids will have once they dive into it.

Extraordinary Animals is a book within the Ultimate Spotlight series on Twirl, which is an imprint of Chronicle Books. Each book in the Ultimate Spotlight highlights astronauts, dinosaurs, volcanoes, firefighters, or something else, much in the same way that animals with extraordinary abilities are in this one. 

It’s not a board book, but the pages are as thick as some that you’ll see. The colors are bright and attractive to those five years and older. The illustrations occupy most of the space on the pages and are the kind that elementary school students will like, without being too babyish. You know the type, where the faces and bodies are too rounded and appeal almost exclusively to pre-k kids.

Nay, Extraordinary Animals is smart, but it also knows its limitations. The book dedicates every two pages to certain characteristics that the animals have, such as teamwork, disguise, superstar athletes, really clever critters and more. Those two pages then have at least five animals that have a couple of sentences and illustrations to accompany them. It’s those illustrations that might pop up. They might also have a die-cut area that rotates with a wheel to its side. When you turn that wheel the characters in the cut-out window will tell or show you something.

One of the wheels turns in order to show and tell readers about how clever crows in Japan are. When they need to crack a nut they’ll place the nut in the road, wait until a passing car crunches it, and then swoop in to collect the nuts once traffic has subsided.

Some of the tabs have information or an illustration of an animal. For example, the axolotl is shown with one of its legs missing, but we’re told that it can re-grow some of its limbs; as well as, many of its organs, like parts of the brain, lungs, and heart. When you open up the axolotl’s tab you’ll see a fully functioning aquatic salamander who is ready to swim. A tab that opens up is the simplest example of one of the interactive elements used in Extraordinary Animals.

There are some tabs that move animals towards the thing that they do, like the bomb-sniffing rat who is going to a landmine or a rescue dog digging through snow to find someone in need. The blurbs that accompany each illustration have one or two simple to compound sentences that explain the special things about the animals. It’s on a level where most of the third-grade audience can read most of it and those fourth-grade readers can dig into all of it without assistance.

But, remember, the blurbs are short and the book is durable, so it’s also great for that pre-k to young elementary students too. The text is short enough for parents to read a dozen or so animals without falling asleep and the book is durable enough to let those same ages spend time with the book alone.

Ultimate Spotlight Extraordinary Animals is by Sandra Laboucarie with illustrations by Vinciane Schleef and is available on Twirl, an imprint of Chronicle Books.

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