Animals Anonymous

by Richard Michelson

School's in session and here's your introduction to some of the wildest, most undisciplined, and ROWDIEST students in class. They're talkative, sneaky, disgusting, and...well...a bunch of animals!

96 pages, Hardcover

First published July 8, 2008

Reviews

[Anessa Roberts · Rating 4 out of 5]

Animals Anonymous by Richard Michelson is book of poetry that will give you a new perspective on the kids in your class. They are mostly about a boy and some are about kids in his class or his teachers. A few of them are also silly, short ones for fun. Most of them have deep meaning, or a great moral behind them. One of the poems implies that you should be who you want to be. That you shouldn't care what others think. Not only are you getting morals in a poem, the book was beautifully illustrated. The book was drawn to look like a spiral bound notebook. It looks like a child had doodled on the pages next to the poems. I really enjoyed putting the pictures and poems together to create a meaning, and a back story.

I didn't really enjoy this book, because the poems skipped around and didn't go in a better organized order. The part I did like about it, was that the author wrote the words, but left the meaning of the words up to you. You got to decide the emotion on a few of the poems. In other poems, the author told you the emotion by pictures or simply by the words. My favorite one, was "Zen Zebra". Even though it is really short, for me it summarized the whole book. Basically it said, "I don't know who I am. Do I want to be a good kid, or a bad kid? Do I be me, or who people say I should be?"

I would recommend this book to someone who likes poetry, fun poetry. Not serious poetry. Also I would recommend this book to someone that likes to see illustrations while they read.

[Rebecca Heywood · Rating 3 out of 5]

Meh! Some poems were funny, most not. This is aimed for kids and some poems were definitely not kid friendly.