Review Detail

101 FIRST ANIMALS is a fun collection of words along with animals. The book uses a blend of photographs and illustrations to show a variety of animals, grouped by location.

What I loved: This is a fun collection of animals, great for infants and young toddlers. The book helps with word recognition as there are the names of animals below photographs or illustrations of them. The pages end up being quite colorful and busy with plenty to visually explore. The groupings are by location, which helps to give some additional context for these animals and where they live.

What left me wanting more: There are a few art styles used that sometimes look like clip art. While they are colorful, the lack of cohesion and mix with photographs is a little odd at times. Photographs are particularly great for this age group, so it would have been nice to have more of those! Parrot is also used twice to get to 101, and ducks and ducklings are counted as two different animals. It also includes somewhat random use of bugs here and there.

Final verdict: 101 FIRST ANIMALS is a cute board book collection of animals that helps with early word recognition for infants and young toddlers.