Andy Seed and Nick East are back with another fantastic glimpse into the world of animals. Their first foray into interviewing deadly creatures was with Interview with a Tiger. A brightly illustrated, informative yet funny introduction to tigers, wolves and other mighty beasts was hugely popular. Interview with a Shark takes a deep dive into the oceans to meet the wondrous and awe-inspiring creatures living beneath the surface.
Armed with his trusty, self invented “tranimalator”, Andy dives into the depths to meet some of the world’s giant underwater inhabitants. He asks them the questions we are all desperate to know the answers to and a few we would never dare ask!! Factual yet funny is the perfect description of this book as the questions may seem silly, but the answers are full of facts.
Reading this book makes me smile and laugh. For so long all our facts about animals came from large volumes of straight facts with some photos added in but now we are blessed to have these colourful and unique ways to learn about animals. The illustrations are dynamic and yet the animal’s integrity remains- they are not re-imagined or changed in any way.
The expectation of the creatures’ personalities are spot on- love that the Ocean Sunfish is so laid back that he doesn’t care about his scientific name and that the Manta Ray is lush, gentle and sweet. I can imagine children creating voices to match the personalities while reading this. I may have also done this while reading it!
Nick East is a hugely talented illustrator and this is a perfect pairing of hilarious text and fantastic illustrations. There is such great attention to detail on each page and I know children will appreciate taking in every inch of the page hungrily reading and interpreting the information. I particularly loved the page with the narwhals and the polar bear asking if they had poked his bum…
With elements of human damage and pollution, it will help readers to get more understanding of what pollution is doing to the oceans and ways in which we can help!
Please say there will be more from this series….Birds? Dinosaurs? Minibeasts? Reptiles and Amphibeans? These go from strength to strength and I have yet to meet a reader who didn’t love them!
My Shelves Are Full 