This would be a good one to keep on a classroom bookshelf for independent reading. The illustrations are fun and colorful and the prose is casual and irreverent.

Each animal would be a manageable “bite” for a new or reluctant reader and the occasional bits of slightly gross humor may help early elementary students to engage.

Animal facts and jokes are presented side-by-side without any obvious distinction which would make an effective critical-thinking exercise for kids working on comprehension.

Many thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review!

It’s no secret how much I love books that tell me a whole bunch of fun facts about animals. My favourite facts in this book are:

* Leeches have 32 brains.

* Elephant shrews “are typically 15cm long, but can jump almost a metre in the air”.

* An axolotl can regenerate its body parts when it’s injured.

I’m not sure how well this book will work with its target audience (one website says 4+, others say 5 to 8 years). I didn’t find the humour funny, although kids may. I think some references will go straight over the heads of many kids. Have kids that age even heard of The Beatles?

Terms that adults would understand could confuse younger readers, especially without a glossary to refer to. A quokka is said to be a “pseudo-roo”. About the myotonic goat: “Somebody should teach them about the fight or flight response.” Do you want to explain to your 5 year old what it means for a stick insect to be “amorous”?

The illustrations are colourful and the animals are cute. I particularly liked the platypus and sloth.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Happy Yak, and imprint of Quarto Publishing Group - Frances Lincoln Children’s Books, for the opportunity to read this book.

Hmmm... You see what this book is trying to do from the outset, and it carries that through on the one same note, rightly or wrongly. It's designed to be a nature book, where we meet some superlative animals, only for every page to have hand-scrawled interjections, and derogatory comments about each critter as new captions to every illustration here. All the subjects also suffer a made-up Latin name that aims to be more truthful than the real one. But I was forced to wonder if it judged its target audience well enough. Take just the second subject, the quokka. If you're aiming to get liked by readers still young enough to be fascinated about the animal's habit of regurgitating its food for a second chew, why deign to call it a "pseudo-roo"? Is that, or the "mini macropod" alternative from the scientific voice, primary school book stuff?

Berating a snake because it has "no arms. Or legs" certainly is, but it's quite tiresome in the finish. I'm quite sure we're supposed to want the science voice with its staid, firm font to 'win' here, and to get our attention. But the poor sense of humour of the scrawl, far beyond the potential copycat behaviour it might inspire, didn't win a friend in my mind. What could have been a decent look at some regular (and most irregular) animals, with a good bit of biology and a fine eye for trivia, didn't need the failed comedy to deliver its lessons.

"The World’s Most Pointless Animals is a witty, quirky, colorfully-illustrated book featuring fascinating facts about some very silly animals…who we find are perhaps not so pointless after all."

With beautifully odd illustrations of quite peculiar animals, this book goes through different pointless aspects of each. All different with unique aspects, this book highlights the fact that there is a place for everyone in the world.