Hello, friends! Today’s book is a brand new addition to our home library, Man Gave Names To All The Animals, written by Bob Dylan and illustrated by Jim Arnosky, a children’s book tribute to the 1979 song by Dylan.

Using the lyrics of the titular Dylan song, we are brought into a world of wonderful wild animals, each page bursting with creatures of all shapes, sizes and types. Pages that feature the song’s chorus are a menagerie of animals, with each verse introducing us to a new animal and showing what name man has chosen for him.

Honestly, I had mixed feelings about this one. This is one of Dylan’s more repetitive songs, which naturally makes the book repetitive as well. That might be fine for reading aloud if you can sing the tune, but then you have to know the tune to sing it (the book does include a CD of Dylan’s original recording, but I hadn’t had a chance to listen to it before reading the book to JJ). And while the intricate and lifelike animal art is lovely, it frankly overshadows what is a rather simple song, and it doesn’t always quite match up: sure, a highland cow is a cow, but it looks like a yak; a boar could technically be a pig, but not quite; and a mountain sheep looks far more like a goat to a young reader. The length is fine, and JJ enjoyed it for the most part, but I did notice her becoming frustrated when she couldn’t easily identify the animals within the massive groups on the pages. It also has a confusingly abrupt ending that stops the narrative literally mid-sentence. Overall, it’s a gorgeous book, and if you love intricate animal art and/or are a Dylan fan, a must-read. But while JJ may get more out of this one as she grows, for now, we were underwhelmed.