My son’s latest favorite read is Wild About Books, by Judy Sierra. It’s the cheerful, rhyming tale of a librarian who accidentally drives her bookmobile into the zoo. The animals discover the fun of reading, and the zoo is never the same.
Marc Brown, author of the popular Arthur series, illustrated the book, but you’d never know it if his name wasn’t on the cover. The style of Wild About Books is all its own. If anything, the illustrations are more creative, colorful, and engaging than those of the Arthur series, reflecting Brown’s classical training at the Cleveland Art Institute.
For adults, much of the fun of reading the book comes from its many references, in word and picture, to other children’s titles—everything from Goodnight Moon to The Cat in the Hat to Harry Potter. The work is an original, though, despite its obvious reverence for its predecessors. In 2004, it won an Irma Simonton Black and James. H. Black Honor for Excellence in Children’s Literature. This accolade, less well known than the Caldecott and Newbery Awards, is unusual in that children are the final judges of the winners. Read it to the animal- or book-lovers in your household and see if they agree.