Module 14 * Poetry and Story Collections * April 21-27

Zoo's Who
by Douglas Florian

Bibliography: Florian, D. (2005). Zoo's who. New York, NY: Harcourt Books, Inc.

Summary:  Florian has written a short poem about 21 different animals both common and exotic.  He also created the illustration that goes with each poem.  The poems range in length from 3 to 8 lines.   

My Take: The poems are cute and short, though some of the vocabulary he uses is more difficult than the length of the poem would lead the reader to believe.  I like that he changes the shape of the poem occasionally to fit the animal (The Tern and The Snake).  The illustrations are, to quote my nine year old son, creepy.  I'm not sure what it is about them, perhaps that most of them are dark and include random collage pieces?  The poems are funny and really do describe the animal they are about.

Reviews: 

"A puffin loves stuffin' / Its bill full of fishes. / It fills it with seven / Or eight if it wishes. / It always finds dishes / Of fishes delicious. / A puffin loves stuffin' / Its bill full of fishes." Florian punishes his legions of fans with 21 more occasions for zoological wordplay, admiring Bush Baby's "bushy tush," observing the behavior of penguins in "penguindy weather," concluding that one good tern deserves another, and so on--shaping or otherwise altering many of the verses, and pairing each to a typically witty construct of paint and found objects. For gales of laughter, read the poems aloud; for chuckles of amusement, linger over the pictures--either way, Florian demonstrates as well as any writer or artist ever has the simple joys of playing with language and imagery. (Poetry. 6-10)

Zoo's Who (review). (2005). Kirkus Reviews, 73(7), 416.

If the intention of this title is to interest young students in and interest them about a number of animals including sloths, lizards and pigs then this book of verse makes a contribution.  As for poetry, however, it is a rather uneven collection.  While some verses are clever and provide interesting images, others fall flat.  "The Eagle", for example, is tightly written and has a wonderful sense of word play.  "The Slugs" is witty, simple and perfectly paced.  Yet, other poems such as "The Bush Baby", "The Tortoise", and "The Sharks" have very little to recommend them.  They are short on music and creative language, to say the least.  The watercolor illustrations that accompany the poems are colorful and have a batik-like quality.

Zoo's Who (review). (2006). Library Media Connection, 24(4), 84.

Use in a School Library: It would be fun to read these poems aloud to kids and see if they can guess the animal from the poem without being told the title (which is always the name of the animal).  Florian has quite a few poetry books, all of which are relatively short, so it would be an easy author/poet to include in a genre study.