Gorgeously illustrated, a lovely children’s book which will be enjoyed for years and years.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for letting me read an advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest feedback.

Review to come to blog/Goodreads/etc.. on September 5th.

I received this book from Netgalley in exchange of an honest review.

I just adore books about animals and so when I saw this one on Netgalley I just had to click that request button! Then it was hoping and waiting but I got it! And here I am! 

This book is all about teamwork. Yep, we humans often do teamwork, but animals do it as well, and in this book we get to see some amazing feats of animal teamwork! Each animal gets 4 pages with fun facts and gorgeous art! There are 6 main teams and at the end we also get some extra teams. 

I loved reading about the various teams and I want to applaud to the writers of the book that they added plenty of information... but didn't cram it full. Unlike another animal book I tried to read in July which had just so much text that it got very tiny and just cluttered. This one has plenty of fun facts but not too many! Just the most important one. In normal/good font. And the facts were very fun to read. Most I already knew, but that is what you get when you are an adult and have been reading animal books since young age. XD Younger me, if she magically could read this much English at age 7/8 would have loved it and learned quite some new things. But as an adult I learned a few new things! Like how squirrel monkey males grow bigger in the shoulders/arms when it is mating season! Or why sardines have such large eyes but no eyelids. 

As I said earlier, there are at the end some other teams. Like bees, but also jaguars and more! I really liked that these were added, though I would have liked to get the information why they make a good team to be included in the block of text (with cute picture) we get of each animal. I mean, the introduction mentions 4 of the 5 animals and why they make a great team, which is nice, but that leaves one animal out. So maybe just list it in the blocks? 

I love that we get a mix of illustrations and photography. Like with the black-capped squirrel monkey and we got to see some adorable illustrations with some real animals in between. So cute! So fun!

All in all, a really fun informative book about teams and animals, I am sure this will be loved by many!

- Honest review in return for free access to the book via NetGalley -
Animal Teams is a wonderful little non-fiction book, hitting exactly the right mark for it's intended purpose and audience.
It covers 6 animals in detail (Common Starling, Black-Capped Squirrel Monkey, Grey Wolf, Leaf-Cutter Ant, Pacific Sardine and European Rabbit) across a number of continents. This is a wonderful text for children interested in or learning about migration, animal features, adaptations, and environments/habitats. The focus around how animals work together is also a great addition, highlighting teamwork to survive, how animal groups have hierarchies or how they care for their most vulnerable.

I particularly enjoyed the melding of both drawn environments and animals alongside inserted photographs of the animals in the art style, and the glossary of terms for children at the back of the book.

A decent book to have on hand in the nature section of a school library. Several animals get four brightly-coloured pages each to show how living in groups and cooperating is of benefit to them, whether it be a starling in a murmuring flock or monkeys. The visuals are slightly unusual in that they're clips of photos of the real thing (on the whole – some look a bit dodgy) cut and pasted onto a cartoonish diorama or landscape – a sensible way perhaps to get over the whole style vs realism debate. The slightness of the book means we only get six animals properly, plus a bit about a handful of also-rans, but what we do get about rabbits' warrens, and leaf-cutter ants working on separate jobs depending on their status, is perfectly fine.