Chapitre thématique

S'intéresser à la vie animale

Pistes d'exploration

Écrire et créer à son tour

Create something new yourself: draw your own animals, share some of the facts you learned. Invent a dialogue and draw a comic of the animals from the book talking to each other. Illustrate the facts in the style of Jess Keating, such as the comic panels which can be found on the right of each page. After reading, design a new cover for the book.

S'informer

Learn more about the animals and facts in the story that make you curious. Make a list of the physical features and special adaptations of the animals in the book. Combine these to create an imaginary “miximal,” draw it and name your new animal.

Découvrir les richesses du texte

Explore the glossary titled “Words to the Rescue” and read the definitions of some of the words in the text. Investigate the book’s back matter to gain insight on what inspired the author to write this book in the section “About Dr. Sugar Glider.” Look closely at the illustrations in the front endpapers: imagine what happened to the bear and the porcupine. After reading, look at the back endpapers: try to recall a fact about each of Dr. Glider's Patients illustrated there.

The Truth about Hippos

Animals at the EDGE: Saving the World's Rarest Creatures

Mots-clés

Humour , Non-fiction , Picture book , animal adaptations , animal behaviour , comic strips , dialogue , facts , illustrations (watercolours) , layout , reference

Commentaire descriptif

This non-fiction picture book playfully presents facts about various organisms using comedy, relatable anthropomorphized characters and situations familiar to children. Readers are led through the book by a sugar glider named Dr. Glider who gives health, nutritional and fitness advice to his patients. He tells a young wildebeest to listen to its mother’s advice to practise running so that it will be able the escape from the cheetahs whose lounging-about it so envies, reminds a headachy owl that it’s nocturnal (“Skip the yoga and try some late-night stargazing instead!”), and similarly heals or counsels an angelfish, an aphid, a platypus, a crocodile, a nurse shark, a frigatebird, some krill, a pitcher plant, a praying mantis, a couple of foxes, a bottlenose dolphin and a mob of meerkats. Each animal has a silly alliterative name, a primary geographic habitat is noted, and central and secondary facts about each species are listed. The dialogue between Dr. Glider and his patients is goofy, as are the animals’ own occasional contributions (“we’re unbe-LEAF-able,” a pitcher plant exclaims). The digitally rendered gouache and watercolour illustrations are likewise hilarious, from the central organisms under discussion (the titular croc, for instance, is shown writhing and burping), to those in the background, like a very suspicious-looking gnu, and even the details around them, such as a lost-aphid poster that describes the missing insect as “small, green, never listens.” The physical and environmental characteristics are cartoonish but accurate, from the red pouch at Freddie Frigatebird’s throat to the sugar glider’s own stripes. The book concludes with information about sugar gliders themselves, a lexicon of key zoological terms (adaptation, dorsal fin, venom, etc.), and endpapers that list all the species by their English and Latin names.