Title: Curious Creatures Talking Together

Written by: Zoe Armstrong

Illustrated by: Anja Sušanj

Published by: Flying Eye Books

This book covers a fascinating topic in a simple and easy to understand way making it highly accessible to young children. It explains how animals communicate with each other without using words using a range of wild and domestic animals as examples. We just have to learn to understand the signals so we can tell when they are happy, hungry, angry, tired or afraid.

In a fun twist to this it is pointed how haw we can mimic animal behaviour to help us communicate better, from the red stag parallel walking to decide who is the strongest instead of fighting, to the soothing lullaby of the humpback whale. We learn how animals use all their senses. Colour, sound, smell and touch are all important methods of communication and again this is compared to human behaviour.

The illustrations and end pages are bold and eye-catching. On each spread the text is scattered around the page so each animal takes centre stage.

At the end of the book there is an important message of how by increasing our understanding of the different methods of animal communication we can develop our empathy skills.

Other books in the series include:

• Curious Creatures Glowing in the Dark
• Curious Creatures Working with Tools.

This series would be ideal in the classroom or for home learning to support the programmes of study for science human and animals. In particular, recognising the differences between each other and exploring how senses enable humans and animals to be aware of the world around them.

You can buy copies of the Curious Creatures series by Zoë Armstrong and Anja Susanj from your local bookshop, or online at uk.bookshop.org which supports local, independent bookshops.

I have also shared this review on Amazon and Goodreads.