Although the book is a high quality production, its organisation seems a little haphazard.
Katy Flint is a commissioning editor at Wide Eyed Editions and based in London. Illustrator, Cornelia Li is a Chinese Canadian based in Toronto. This is their second collaboration and together they have produced an interesting book about what animals get up to when the sun goes down.
The book is aimed at youngsters who are full of questions and just starting to learn about animals and places around the word featuring animals and their behaviour from a myriad of environments. There is not a lot of text but it provides useful snippets of information about the area and the behaviour of the animals who live there. I didn’t know that tarantulas hunt at night and will even tackle a lizard!
Li’s illustrations are attractive and beautifully coloured, as appropriate to the particular landscape. I especially like the pages on the Arctic which she has made come alive despite the restrictive colour palette available with the spectacular glow of the Northern Lights in the background. However, the variable scale of the animals depicted may well cause some confusion in readers – with, for instance, a racoon depicted as tall as the garbage can it’s trying to get food from and a rhino and an hyena shown as much the same size in the savannah.
Although the book is a high quality production and has a double page spread on each habitat, its organisation seems a little haphazard. In trying to include so many environments, with habitats ranging from urban settings in America, to the Arctic, the Australian Outback, unspecified desserts, through to coral reefs, it seems to want to cover too much in too little space. Leaving out the eponymous ‘Beach’ would not have detracted from the overall book as it provides little information as it includes only three animals and is the second habitat from Australia.
Although there is a bonus of a Glow in the Dark poster of the Deep Sea, identifying where the particular deep sea is and naming the animals pictured would have made it even better.
Reviewed by Jan Kershaw
Distributed by: Allen & Unwin
Released: June 2019
RRP: $22.99
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