(3) 4-6 Illustrated by Laura Carlin. Carlin received a Bologna Ragazzi Award Mention for this handsome illustrated edition of the late British poet laureate's classic tale. Her dramatic mixed-media art includes both dark, shadowy illustrations and delicately lined drawings against white backgrounds; alternately bold and gentle, the pictures perfectly capture the mood of the story. Die cuts and numerous foldouts add extra appeal to this unabridged edition.

Reviewer: Jennifer M. Brabander | Horn Book Magazine Issue: December, 1968

(2) K-3 Illustrated by Tracey Campbell Pearson. "Pets are the Hobby of my brother Bert," an unnamed girl announces. At first it seems tame enough, but Bert's menagerie includes Gorilla and Lion, not to mention Pangolins, Ocelot, and Grampus. After the mischief-making narrator releases the pets, chaos ensues, shown in Pearson's cheerfully riotous watercolors. Hughes's verse is light and loose--just right for such a "house-shaking rumpus."

Reviewer: Martha V. Parravano | Horn Book Magazine Issue: May, 2009

(2) 4-6 Illustrated by Raymond Briggs. The book begins with a seal birthing awake into the sea and ends with a lamb dying into the chaotic abyss. In between there is wonder. Every page reveals a glimpse of life at once familiar and utterly strange. Briggs's soft black-and-white charcoal sketches are, mainly, doodles in the margins; the best ones amplify something implicit in the poems.

Reviewer: Lissa Paul | Horn Book Magazine Issue: July, 2007

(2) 4-6 Illustrated by Flora McDonnell. Presented in the same appealing, hand-sized format as The Mermaid's Purse, these twenty-eight poems evoke members of the animal kingdom in language so deft that the profundity of the ideas suggested may elude the casual reader. But the full-bleed art, layered in black, white, and shades of gray, sets the tone. There's humor aplenty and clever wordplay, there is also, at times, the menace of tooth and claw.

Reviewer: Joanna Rudge Long | Horn Book Magazine Issue: July, 2003

(2) YA Illustrated by Flora McDonnell. There's a bleak undercurrent running through this cycle of twenty-eight brief poems concerning creatures of the sea, and some jolting tonal contrasts. McDonnell's bold drafting and impressionistic brush strokes capture the wildness of the sea and the poet's dark humor with sensitivity and panache. The hand-sized book is unusually appealing, with each poem set modestly on a black-and-white painting.

Reviewer: Joanna Rudge Long | Horn Book Magazine Issue: September, 2000

(3) 4-6 Illustrated by Jackie Morris. Eleven pourquoi tales from England's late poet laureate describe how various animals came about--the whale grew from a root in God's garden; the vain rabbit developed his long legs chasing the moon from hilltop to hilltop, trying to marry her. Morris's gentle, natural watercolors of animals, both full-page and spot, add a quiet, well-balanced visual component to Hughes's assured tales.

Reviewer: Anita L. Burkam | Horn Book Magazine Issue: October, 1964

(2) 4-6 Illustrated by Andrew Davidson. Reillustrated once again, this classic story here features black-and-white scratchboard illustrations with a graphic, WPA-poster look that is well suited to the science-fiction parable of a giant made of iron who saves the world from destruction.

Reviewer: Jennifer M. Brabander | Horn Book Magazine Issue: December, 1968