Book review - Lesser Spotted Animals by Martin Brown

Martin Brown is the illustrator of the extremely popular Horrible Histories series of books, and Lesser Spotted Animals (affiliate link) is his first foray into writing and illustrating. When Brown was little he loved drawing animals, and in fact he had the initial drawings for this book stashed away for 30 years!

Lesser Spotted Animals is a fantastic book for chidren that are bored with reading about the usual handful of different animals and want to find out about animals that we never get to see. I immediately knew that this book would appeal to Harry, he loves reading non-fiction books and learning fun and quirky facts that he can share with us. I was right, he has hardly put it down!

Each page introduces us to a new animal - the Dagger-Toothed Flower Bat, the Cuban Solenodon and Speke's Pectinator to name a few. Each double spread page contains a gorgeous illustration, information, fun facts and plenty of humour. Some of the animals seem familiar, and others are completely new. There's a little fact box for each one and I loved the way that it's written to appeal to little ones, for example Size - 'as big as a very tall, fat man lying down' or 'bit smaller than a guinea pig but with a long sturdy tail' - it's really easy to visualise! Some of these animals are plentiful but many are endangered, and there is very little known about some of them.

It's a great book that a child can pick up and put down to read in small chunks, great for bedtime, and packed with plenty of useful and fun information.

I received a copy of this book to review. Amazon link is affiliate.