An Alphabet Trip to the Limerick Zoo is one of those rare books that is, educationally speaking, multi-purpose.  I’m not sure how the author came up with it, but it’s a pretty clever concept.

Each letter of the alphabet is assigned an appropriate animal.  For instance, “A” is for aardvark.  A limerick is written to feature each animal.  One or two stretch the limits of limerick structure just a tad, but most of them are excellent examples of limericks.  This is especially amazing when you consider that the content of each limerick actually describes and/or teaches about the featured animal.  This is not an easy feat to accomplish!

Each limerick is accompanied by a colorful illustration done in marker by one of the students of the AIC College of Design.  These are all excellent drawings.  (One or two of the illustrators might like to be introduced to ProMarkers, though!)  Because there are a variety of illustrators, it’s fun to see the differences in artistic style, even within a certain consistency of illustration style.  Do keep in mind that the illustrations are not realistic, particularly where colors are concerned.

Besides being just plain fun to listen to and look at, there are a number of ways this book could be used.  Obviously, being limericks, it could be used as part of a lesson about poetry – in particular, it could be helpful for teaching the structure of limericks.  (This is especially helpful because so many limericks are quite lewd.  Do not have your students do their own internet search for limerick examples.  Trust me!)  It would also be a great jumping-off point for zoological studies.  It would even be helpful for introducing the idea of extinction, as one of the animals in the book (the quagga) is extinct.

If you need to help keep young ones’ hands occupied while you read – perhaps they are kinesthetic learners and “hear” better this way – grab the coloring book, too.  Here you’ll find the line drawings without their accompanying color, so your children can color their own.

I received one or more of the products mentioned above for free using Tomoson.com. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will be good for my readers.