Hello, friends! Our book today is A Storytelling Of Ravens, written by Kyle Lukoff and illustrated by Natalie Nelson, a wonderfully quirky book about animal collectives.

Basing each illustration/text example around a different animal collective noun (such as a “storytelling of ravens” or a “shrewdness of apes”), the reader is treated to a number of delightfully weird situations in which the animals play out the literal definition of their collective name. For instance, a parliament of owls thought their motion would pass unanimously, but there was one vote of dissent. The tower of giraffes aren’t sure where the pine tree decorated with candy canes and popcorn came from, but they do know it’s delicious. And the memory of elephants was SURE that peanut patch was around here somewhere…

Strange, silly, and full of charm. While some of the jokes might fly over the heads of smaller bookworms, they are nonetheless hilarious for older readers. But most of the gags do a fantastic job of straddling simple exaggeration for little ones with deadpan text that will delight adults – who wouldn’t enjoy the image of a bloat of hippos making their way to a smokestack spewing sprinkles, accompanied by the text: “Five words: explosion at the cupcake factory”. It’s ridiculous fun aided nicely by the colorful art, and comes in at an easy length for any age. JJ and I had a lot of fun with this one, and we recommend it. Baby Bookworm approved!