Animal Albums from A to Z
Age 4+
Picture Books: Character Books
From the inimitable creator of El Deafo, this all-ages alphabet book is also a hand-wrought, high-fidelity, hilariously tongue-in-cheek homage to the golden days of album cover art.
Cece Bell loves music and collecting old record albums, her introduction explains, especially albums featuring animal artists. The bouncing harmonies of the Barbershop Beagles, the elegant crooning of the elephant Ella Fontaine, the hilarious rhymes of the Hip-Hop Hedgehogs—all are represented in this quirky ABC book that draws on the creator’s personal collection of albums, memorabilia, and lyrics dating between 1944 and 1984, the heyday of album design. With wry, witty text, silly and sumptuous sound play, and biographical end matter on all twenty-six musical acts, the book commands and stands up to repeated readings. Bright, zany art—all painted and lettered by hand—a stellar design, and an album-size trim make it a collector’s item in its own right, sure to grace the coffee tables of vinyl- and design-loving adults even as it tickles young funny bones. A hootenanny hosted by the creator of the Newbery Honor Book and Eisner Award winner El Deafo, Animal Albums from A to Z also quietly reminds us just how much music can mean to everyone.
Creators
Cece Bell is the creator of the graphic novel El Deafo, which was a Newbery Honor Book and a Will Eisner Comic Industry Award winner, the Geisel Honor Book Rabbit and Robot: The Sleepover, Rabbit and Robot and Ribbit, I Yam a Donkey!, Bee-Wigged, Itty Bitty, the Chick and Brain books, and the Sock Monkey series. She has also created books with her husband, Tom Angleberger, including Crankee Doodle and the Inspector Flytrap series.
Reviews
This elaborately conceived yet winningly goofy picture book comprises 26 album covers — all allegedly vintage. . . . Bell’s attention to detail, both typographical and alliterative, is inspiring, as is her commitment to her conceit. . . . Kids don’t need to know what zydeco is, or that Mandy and the Meerkats are a nod to Motown artists like Diana Ross and the Supremes, to appreciate Bell’s jokes and wordplay. They can surely enjoy the bold graphics and colorful silliness of the illustrations without getting that Bell is in some cases riffing on designs for actual LPs by Cream, Simon & Garfunkel and the Dave Brubeck Quartet. . . . I would like to imagine that someday a young fan of ‘Animal Albums From A to Z’ will encounter a copy of Brubeck’s ‘Time Out’ LP in a record store; think, ‘I know this from somewhere’; and, fond memory stirred, pick up a copy.
The New York Times Book Review
Tongue firmly in cheek, Bell explains in her introduction that she’s a collector of records by animal musicians, from the 1940s to the ’80s. . . uproariously funny, clever lyrics. . . Hilarious, high-stepping tributes to a musical niche that never was.
Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
Bell brings the absolute best of her exuberant wit to this inventive, zany, hilarious assemblage of album covers. After a deadpan introduction explains this “authentic” collection of rare vintage LPs, Bell presents a deeply silly, enormously enjoyable A to Z of animals as recording artists. . . . Meticulously crafted collages of hand-painted paper and paint strike every right note in cleverly recalling classic album-cover design of the mid- to late-twentieth century. . . Reveling in everything alliterative, the humor swings from goofy to groanworthy, from silly to sophisticated. . . . Rounding out this musical tour de force, Bell offers audio of these super silly songs accessible online via QR code.
Booklist (starred review)
Cece Bell’s laugh-out-loud-funny Animal Albums From A to Z kicks off with a note about how she loves “finding and acquiring old albums, especially those created by animal musicians.” She then proceeds to present with wholehearted dedication and sincerity her collection of (fictional) animal record albums, starting with an armadillo on an accordion and ending with zebras playing zydeco. . . . Lyrics for one song from each album are printed on the verso, and every set is a world of its own containing vivid characters, bizarre story lines and plenty of humor. . . . Animal Albums, which will surely go down as one of the year’s top picture books, is the best kind of weird and wonderful—from A to Z..
BookPage (starred review)
Newbery Honoree Bell creates an entire high-fidelity world with this clever, irresistibly prodigious abecedarian, which features album cover art and one song’s worth of liner-note lyrics from 26 invented animal recording artists. . . . For new listeners and seasoned audiophiles alike, this rigorously imaginative tour de force—conjured up from collaged, hand-painted paper and even a little embroidery—displays Bell’s goofy, deeply affectionate, no-detail-left-behind creativity, which turns each rockin’ concept “up to 11.”
Publishers Weekly (starred review)
