Canada Animals

Covello, an illustrator, designer and motion graphics artist, has previously produced four other board books, Toronto ABC, Canada ABC, Canada 123 and Everyday ABC.

In Canada Animals, Covello focuses principally on mammals with some three-quarters of the board book’s 41 animals being familiar (and some less familiar) mammals, the remainder consisting of eight birds, one crustacean (lobster), one amphibian (wood frog) and a fish (salmon). Three more birds, a red-winged blackbird, an owl and a blue jay, appear on the book’s front or back covers but not in the main body of the book.

Covello uses a somewhat cartoonish art style in representing the book’s animals. For the most part, each animal is presented on a single page with the background portraying the animal’s common habitat. Text is limited to the animal’s one or two word name. In a few cases, more than one animal appears on a page. For instance, a pair of facing pages is quartered, with each quadrant revealing one of four bear types, spirit, brown, black and polar, each in its appropriate environment. Similarly, a double-page spread presents five varieties of whales: humpback, narwhal, orca, beluga and blue.

In many instances, Covello illustrates his mammals in both their adult and juvenile forms. Polar and black bears are seen with their cubs, a deer is accompanied by two fawns, tadpoles swim by the frog, and robin chicks clamor for food. As well, Covello’s art sometimes recognizes that the male and female versions of an animal might look differently. The deer image contains a doe and a buck as well as their two fawns. Covello also recognizes seasonal changes in appearance with the snowshoe hair being presented in its winter and summer colours and the salmon in its spawning red.

Canada Animals is definitely a vocabulary builder as it introduces youngsters to the names of some of the animals that they might meet in their local area, animals such as Canada geese, woodpeckers, deer, frogs, rabbits, skunks, raccoons, chipmunks and squirrels, while also making them aware of animals that they might only come to know via the Web or by visiting zoos. Among such animals that Covello presents are muskox, walruses, pine martens, mountain lions, lynxes, bighorn sheep, caribou and moose.

An attractively designed board book, Canada Animals would make a fine home purchase and should be part of collections serving the board book crowd.