Eekily, Sneakily

This bright and colourful picture book celebrates some of New Zealand’s garden and forest wildlife. It is a lovely introduction, written in a poetic style, to thirteen of our creatures that you might find when wandering through the garden or bush. Each creature is given a double-page spread. The headings are given in te reo Māori and the common English name. On the left is Dave Gunson’s detailed artwork featuring a birds-eye view. Beside that are a few sentences with facts woven into interesting language features; and on the right is a full page drawing of the creature.

The language features that Anne Hunter uses in describing the creatures include rhyme, assonance and alliteration. This, coupled with a prolific use of adjectives, makes this book useful for teaching language features as well as being a visual delight.

The text is large, the poetic words roll off the tongue easily making this a good read-aloud for a class.

Three pages at the end of the book are dedicated to ‘fascinating facts’ with more information as well as references for further reading.

This book is sure to spark an interest in finding out more about some of our ‘icky’ and beautiful creatures.

Title: Eekily, Sneakily

Author: Anne Hunter

Illustrator: Dave Gunson

Publisher: New Holland Publishers

ISBN: 9781869665036

RRP: $24.99

Format: Paperback

Date of Publication: 2018

Ages: 4-10

Reviewed by: Nova Gibson, Librarian, Massey Primary School, Auckland

How are you recommending this book? Recommended

Opening sentence: Busily, buzzily, in the sunny hours: it’s us, the browny-golden fuzz, who visit all the flowers.

You can buy this book here