Unnatural Selections

Overview

Beloved illustrator Wallace Edwards invites us into the world of Professor I.B. Doodling, a traveling artist who takes suggestions from schoolchildren in order to create fantastical hybrid animals. The result of these visits is Unnatural Selections, a collection of magnificent beasts, from the stately Whalephant to the talented Lizabouboon. Sure to inspire the imagination, Wallace Edwards’s intricate illustrations invite you to pore over them again and again. A supplementary index lists additional creatures to spot throughout the book’s pages, encouraging readers to go back for a second, and a third, look.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781459805552
Publisher:	Orca Book Publishers
Publication date:	10/01/2014
Pages:	32
Product dimensions:	9.68(w) x 11.57(h) x 0.39(d)
Age Range:	3 - 5 Years

About the Author

Wallace Edwards is a graduate of the Ontario College of Art and an award-winning author and illustrator. His paintings and illustrations are found in public and private collections, books, magazines and on public display in Canada and the United States. Wallace lives in Yarker, Ontario. For more information, visit www.wallace-edwards-art.com.

Editorial Reviews

"Edwards presents a delightful collection of fantastical creatures that can only be created in the imagination: the Whalephant, the carpantelope, the frogtopus, and many more. Captivating, rich illustrations with hidden pictures and bonus creatures will keep viewers looking and imagining. A book for encouraging imagination and creativity, this can be used as a jumping off point to see what animals children could come up with and discussions on whether their selections could be 'natural' or 'unnatural'—or if their creature could even survive in the wild."

Library Media Connection

[Starred review] "Hold onto your hat, Mr. Darwin, there are several new species in town—and their origins are curious...Each hybridized animal introduced by Professor I.B. Doodling...comes from the delightful recesses of Wallace Edwards' imagination. The author-illustrator has produced yet another fantastical picturebook guaranteed to ignite creative sparks in readers of all ages...Edwards creates richly layered scenes bursting with multiple components...Hours can be spent poring over every inch of every page, unearthing elements previously unnoticed...Edwards greatest triumph is his ability to encourage us all to discover the strange and wonderful beasts that already dwell in our own imaginations."

Quill & Quire

"A wonderful new book that equals the humour and lush illustrations of his previous success...Each of the detailed, brilliantly hewed illustrations has other wondrous and absurd animals displayed along with the main creature. At the end of the book there is a list which identifies the extra eighteen fabulous animals hidden in plain sight on the pages. Readers are encouraged to go back and search for the new animals and are provided with a feast of visual delights to look upon again and again...Fun for all ages. Highly recommended!"

Resource Links

"Elegant illustrations and nonsensical poems about everything from the "Whalephant" ("Everyone who gets to see him, secretly would like to be him") to the "Leofroat" (a mashup of leopard, frog and goat).
The book encourages children to spot and identify the different animals in the pictures."

Facepuller blog

"A magnificently curious compendium of creatures...Edwards’ sophisticated watercolour and coloured pencil paintings are full of intricate details and exotic habitats...Inventive, preposterous, and fun. Children will undoubtedly be inspired to create their own zoological concoctions."

National Reading Campaign blog

"The pages are full of eye-popping detail, but the fantastical and unexpected are grounded in an obvious knowledge of real flora and fauna described in meticulous watercolour and pencil technique. The brisk text rings of Ogden Nash’s playful rhymes...[A book] to be examined spread by spread for all its detail and visual jokes."

CM Magazine

Edwards presents us with Professor I.B. Doodling, a traveling artist, who produces a series of imaginary hybrid animals. They are framed in solid colors on one side of a double page and sketched and described in a rhymed couplet on the other. Some are combinations of two, like the whalelephant, the hawkodile, and the tyrabbosaurus rex (t-rex plus rabbit). Others mix three together, like the carpantelope (carp, panda, and antelope) and leofroat (leopard, frog and goat). All twelve are ingeniously inventive with touches of humor, climaxing with one called simply “Skip,” which combines seven different creatures. On the final two pages readers are challenged to find eighteen new creations hidden in the illustrations somewhere in the book. Except for the flamboyant clown-like Professor, all of the strange creatures and settings are naturalistically produced. Edwards uses watercolors, gouache, and pencil for his detailed creations and their appropriate environments. Elaborate frames surround their names above the deft rhymes. Readers should be inspired to create combinations of their own. Reviewer: Ken Marantz and Sylvia Marantz; Ages 4 to 8.

Children's Literature - Ken Marantz and Sylvia Marantz

10/01/2014
PreS-Gr 3—Professor I. B. Doodling, a traveling artist, presents beasts mixed and matched from the imaginations of children. These hybrid animals are stunningly illustrated with an accompanying verse describing them. Imagined creatures such as the "Hawkodile" are portrayed with a whimsical blending of attributes such as a reptilian tail accompanied by wings and a feathered head that is "seldom moving." The "Cowaconda" sports a black-and-white body but with an extensive snaking neck that "when her head is near, her body's yond-a." The "Leofroat" combines the leopard, frog, and goat to create "a handsome sight," and the ungainly structure of the "Toraffe," a hybrid of the tortoise and giraffe, requires a balloon to hold up her backside. In addition to the mentioned creatures, more hybrids appear hidden in the detailed illustrations, and their names appear in the back matter. While certainly fantastical and bizarre, this collection of creatures with their uninspiring verses may find limited appeal. An optional purchase.—Carol Connor, Cincinnati Public Schools, OH

School Library Journal

2014-07-16
A gallery of chimerical critters that Darwin himself would be hard put to justify. Edwards catches the exuberant "Whalephant" in midbreach, water streaming from its flapping ears as well as its flukes and a broad grin behind its trunk and tusks. He places the sinuous "Cowaconda" ("when her head is near, her body's yond-a") in a verdant meadow alongside a Koalarus, a Dorse and a Swox (as well as a fully ordinary Holstein that stands under a tree in whose branches an anaconda twines). The Tyrabbosaurus Rex sits on a stool, waiting for his meal ("He loves when his tasty carrots / are delivered by friendly parrots"), its toothy, reptilian head bedecked with long white ears sitting atop a fuzzy white body. With these and other lovingly detailed portmanteau creations, Edwards (Mixed Beasts, 2005) takes nature past its outer limits to hilarious effect. Made up of easily recognizable, if notably unlikely, parts that are rendered with crisp, colorful precision, each of the 12 animals poses proudly in (more or less) natural settings. The odd, smaller Frogtopus or Snailagator hides in the weeds for sharper-eyed viewers to spot. The comment attached to the seven-animal Skip serves for all: "A wondrous beast / to say the least." An imaginary zoo that will set readers to chortling. (key to smaller creatures) (Picture book. 6-8)

Kirkus Reviews