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Hamza's Wild World: Packed with fun animal facts!
416 pages, Hardcover
Published September 26, 2024
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About the author
Louise Forshaw
160 books15 followersHello! I’m Louise Forshaw aka Munkey Pants!
I'm an illustrator (and sometimes author) living in a small town in the North East just outside Newcastle.
I work from home in my small studio being supervised by 3 noisy, mischievous office assistants. Who are a constant source of inspiration!
As a child I spent my time watching cartoons, creating my own characters, watching more cartoons and drawing comics to give to my favourite teachers.
I graduated in 2008 with a BA (Hons) in Illustration and Animation from Newcastle College. After graduating, I spent a lot of time doing placements at various design companies and volunteering at a local Gallery. This gave me the opportunity to showcase my work and work alongside other artists such as Simon Donald, co-founder of the British comic magazine Viz.
I signed with Advocate Art in 2012 and have spent most of my time drawing my favourite things and working with lots of lovely publishers!
I'm an illustrator (and sometimes author) living in a small town in the North East just outside Newcastle.
I work from home in my small studio being supervised by 3 noisy, mischievous office assistants. Who are a constant source of inspiration!
As a child I spent my time watching cartoons, creating my own characters, watching more cartoons and drawing comics to give to my favourite teachers.
I graduated in 2008 with a BA (Hons) in Illustration and Animation from Newcastle College. After graduating, I spent a lot of time doing placements at various design companies and volunteering at a local Gallery. This gave me the opportunity to showcase my work and work alongside other artists such as Simon Donald, co-founder of the British comic magazine Viz.
I signed with Advocate Art in 2012 and have spent most of my time drawing my favourite things and working with lots of lovely publishers!
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
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April 26, 2025bring back reading fun facts !
October 28, 2024
A very iffy, patchy read – this aims to be a very child-friendly encyclopaedia about animal life. It's very child-friendly, but if teachers end up scorning it then I wouldn't be too surprised. The visuals contain a lot of fine photography, but the animals themselves have been clipped out so the beasts are in isolation, been given added cartoonish details, and sometimes needless speech bubbles. Birds photoshopped onto a hedge really do look cheaply done with this approach, and everything else loses natural context. But the text is where this is let down – all in an approach intended to make it child-friendly, randomised and never a slog to be browsed through in small doses.
To that end we start with a bit about the author, and then we get told it's time for his top ten favourite animals – except it's not, it's just one of them, before we're on to body types and the different kind of critter there are out there. Bird anatomy, Peter Scott, invertebrates, biodiversity defined – it's a right hodge-podge. The fact that 'further reading elsewhere' box-outs come midway through a mini-essay and not when they're finished is a further annoyance.
There is still nothing incorrect about this, and we're told the large font and great use of blank page is designed to make this dyslexia-friendly, in keeping with the author's own reading difficulty. But here the pick and mix approach, allowing a lot of important stuff to get a passing mention too late (evolution – page 390ish, for one), is just a bit too much. This isn't as fun as it seems to think it is (black and white throughout doesn't help there), and certainly isn't as coherent as it knows it ought to have been. Three stars is generally to highlight the dyslexia-friendliness, rather than actual qualities.
To that end we start with a bit about the author, and then we get told it's time for his top ten favourite animals – except it's not, it's just one of them, before we're on to body types and the different kind of critter there are out there. Bird anatomy, Peter Scott, invertebrates, biodiversity defined – it's a right hodge-podge. The fact that 'further reading elsewhere' box-outs come midway through a mini-essay and not when they're finished is a further annoyance.
There is still nothing incorrect about this, and we're told the large font and great use of blank page is designed to make this dyslexia-friendly, in keeping with the author's own reading difficulty. But here the pick and mix approach, allowing a lot of important stuff to get a passing mention too late (evolution – page 390ish, for one), is just a bit too much. This isn't as fun as it seems to think it is (black and white throughout doesn't help there), and certainly isn't as coherent as it knows it ought to have been. Three stars is generally to highlight the dyslexia-friendliness, rather than actual qualities.
December 22, 2025
I love Hamza and am a BIG fan of animal facts so this book is perfect! It's absolutely packed full of information at 403 pages long but Hamza has broken it down into well structured bite sized pieces, great for young and older adults! Will definitely dip back into it in the future!
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews