Slow Loris
December 29th, 2003by Alexis Deacon
ISBN: 192913228X
This slim book manages to be beautiful, clever, and humorous. How many things — let alone things available for purchase at just under eight bucks — can you say that about?
Slow Loris is an animal at the zoo, an animal misunderstood as boring by both the zoo-going public and the other animals. What readers of this book, the other zoo animals (but not the zoo-going public) come to understand is that Slow Loris has a secret life.
At night, Slow Loris is party animal and he has the most fabulous hats.
So Deacon has created a cute and clever enough premise; what really makes this book special is the art. Deacon’s pictures look like watercolor-washed sketches, and he uses cut-outs to achieve more depth and visual interest. The page layout is fantastic: designs draw the eye across the page (often across two-page spreads), and a hand-lettered type text is used in ways that either blend in with or set starkly apart from the images, with both methods working to propel the story.
A child (the publisher’s target market is ages 4-8) will love this book because it has wonderful pictures of animals and it is funny; adults who have a sense of fun and are willing to let themselves go and enjoy an “all ages” book will love it for the same reasons. Highly recommended.
February 19th, 2004 at 6:22 pm
This beautifully illustrated book makes the point that things (lorises, people, whatever) are not always what they appear to be at first glance. Indeed, the slow loris CAN seem boring to zoo visitors, but with patience, they’ll see this little primate move gracefully through its habitat. Although the wild party this loris throws at night is a bit ambitious for these animals, this is an excellent book to teach young kids that walking by an exhibit once isn’t the best way to learn about a creature. (I’m a zoo educator.)
May 4th, 2004 at 10:10 pm
what are slow loris