Looking for inspiration for this year’s Reading Quest? Take a look at our favourite non-fiction fact books about animals from around the world – all free to borrow with your library card!
Reading Quest starts from 18 July and you can sign up at any library throughout the summer holidays. Find out more about Busca de Leitura.
We Are All Animals: Discover What You Have in Common with a Cat, a Bat, a Jellyfish and 150 Other Animals!
Ben Hoare
We Are All Animals offers children an awe-inspiring new way to understand the animal kingdom.
This unique book reveals astonishing similarities in the anatomy – and many more characteristics – of humans and other animals, celebrating our entire furry, scaly, slimy, slippery extended family.
Children will be delighted to discover how similar they are to bats, bees, dogs, frogs, jellyfish, giraffes, and many more.
Paws, Claws and Jaws: Read All About the Nasty Bits!
Terry Deary
Hold your horses, the cat is out the bag! Discover all the amazing and awful facts about barmy beasts and cagey creatures across time with history’s most horrible headlines. The master of making history fun, Terry Deary, turns his attention to animals across time.
From gory stories of sacrifices in the stone age, murderous games in arenas in Roman times, a clever baboon who was given the job of a railway signalman in the Victorian era all the way up to the inventors of sonar inspired by bats, it’s all in this horrible book.
Creaturepedia: Welcome to the Greatest Show on Earth
Adrienne Barman
Welcome to this collection of best-loved animals from all over the world, chosen for their special talents and characteristics, with fun illustrations by Adrienne Barman.
Meet ‘the architects’, the ‘noisy neighbours’, the ‘homebodies’, the ‘forever faithfuls’, the ‘champions of forgetfulness’ and more in this alphabetically ordered encyclopedia.
Filled with fascinating facts, curious creatures and characterful cartoons, this book will keep young explorers busy for hours.
Curious Features of Extraordinary Creatures
Fiona Fogg
Meet incredible creatures from all around the world in this colourful, fact-packed animal guide. ‘Curious Features of Extraordinary Creatures’ tells you all the essential facts about some of the most unique mammals, birds, fish, reptiles and insects that can be found on our planet.
Bite-sized text breaks down key information about the creature’s appearance, behaviour and habitat, while colourful and dynamic illustrations bring the animal to life in front of you. Each spread also features bold graphic-novel style panels that tell the story of a key aspect of each animal’s daily life, such as the aye-aye foraging for its dinner and the peacock spider performing a dramatic dance to attract a mate.
Tomar emprestado Curious Features of Extraordinary Creatures →
Animal FACTopia!: Follow the Trail of 400 Beastly Facts
Julie Beer
Welcome to Animal FACTopia!, a purrfectly amazing world of facts, all of which are verified by Encyclopaedia Britannica.
Every fact in this book is connected to the next in a fascinating web of information, where you will leapfrog from topic to topic in surprising and hilarious ways. Sometimes your path branches and you can slide down a rabbit hole to a totally different, but still connected, part of the book.
Discover where your curiosity will take you!
Amazing Animals with Astonishing Jobs
Simão Filipe
Is your doctor a donkey? Is your postman a platypus? Probably not; that would be amazing!
Animals are pretty amazing, and believe it or not, many of them do have jobs. This funny and fascinating introduction to the world of working animals takes children on a whirlwind world tour where they’ll meet everything from bomb-sniffing bees to the bodega cats of New York City.
Deadly Animal Atlas: Amazing Facts, Fold-Out Maps, and Life-Size Surprises
Camilla De la Bédoyère
Beware! The world’s deadliest creatures reside in the pages of this epic kid’s animal atlas… do you dare to meet them all?
Navigate your way across the continents and discover killer facts, detailed maps and astonishing photos of sharks, crocodiles, snakes, scorpions, spiders, and more – with lift-the-flaps and life-size surprises that reveal all there is to know about our planet’s fiercest hunters.
I’m Joining the Herd: Meet Over 50 Animals Who Like to Stick Together
Saskia Gwinn
Follow Zebra as she discovers how animals live and work together in this clever creature caper, packed with oodles of facts and a spoonful of silliness!
Packs, flocks, hives, prides and especially herds – there are lots of amazing animal groups but there are SO many MORE. From chicken broods, shark shivers and meerkat mobs to baboon troops, tuna shoals and even a cauldron of bats, follow Zebra as she discovers how over 50 different animals live and work together in this super-fun collection of awesome animal tales.
Animals Would You Rather?: 200 Fun and Silly Scenarios
National Geographic Kids
Have fun with family and friends with this interactive game book, bursting with 200 funny scenarios, silly choices and challenging questions all about animals!
Would you rather have fur or scales? A mighty roar or a deadly snap? Fly high like a vulture or dive deep like a whale?
Jam-packed with brain-busting animal facts and tons of colourful photos it is sure to get conversations going and bring out some hilarious answers!
The World’s Most Ridiculous Animals
Philip Bunting
Written by Philip Bunting, this book is filled with facts about some of the weirdest creatures in the natural world.
The antagonist voice (speaking though cheeky annotations) points out the apparent ridiculousness of each creature’s features, while the narrator’s voice describe the evolutionary reasons or advantages for each animal’s extraordinary characteristics.
With hilarious text throughout and bright, contemporary illustrations, this guide to ridiculous animals contains funny labelled diagrams and will help teach kids about evolution by studying some of its most wild products!
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