Great Big Guinea Pigs - Hardcover

Roth, Susan L.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1582347247 ISBN 13: 9781582347240

Publisher: Bloomsbury USA Childrens, 2006

Synopsis

Did you know that once upon a time, about 8 million years ago, guinea pigs weren't sweet, cute, or little?


We all know about the enormous dinosaurs that used to roam the earth, but millions of years ago, there were GREAT BIG GUINEA PIGS, too!


During a bedtime story, one little guinea pig learns all about his very big ancestors, and how guinea pigs evolved into the lovable pets we have today.


This fun and factual picture book by Susan Roth features richly textured cut-paper illustrations that bring to life the story of the great, big, prehistoric guinea pig.

About this title

About the Author

Susan L. Roth is the author and illustrator of many wonderful books for children, including Hard Hat Area and the best-selling My Love for You. Her books have received such awards as the New York Times Best Illustrated Book of the Year, ABA Pick of the Lists, and the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award. She has three grown children and lives with her husband in New York City.

Reviews

PreSchool-Grade 2–A mother guinea pig tells her child a goodnight story with a twist: their ancestors were giants. As she describes the details of their size (We were as big as buffalo!) and habits, he interjects with excited questions and comments. Though her offspring has some doubts about the story's truth, Mom confirms at the end that she read about it this morning in the Times (newspaper scraps line their cage). Roth's creative color collages shift back and forth between the modern animals in their cozy home and dramatic but lighthearted scenes of the giant beasts in prehistoric South America. The textured torn paper that makes the smaller rodents seem so cuddly looks appropriately odd on their much larger predecessors, whose sharp but goofy teeth and expressive eyes add to the sense of fun. The first full view of the great big guinea pigs, which requires a vertical turn of the book, is especially entertaining. With varied perspectives, expressive figures, and creative composition, the spreads bring both modern and prehistoric worlds to life. A white background clearly differentiates the mother-child scenes from the richly colored images from eight million years ago. While fun to read and visually engaging, the book also presents fascinating information based on recent scientific discoveries. The facts come through in the dialogue without detracting from the lively interplay. The idea of introducing prehistoric mammals within a bedtime tale is original and highly successful.–Steven Engelfried, Beaverton City Library, OR
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Who can resist a title like this? And it's equally hard not to love the mother-son guinea-pig duo. They're sort of like their human counterparts--the son wants a bedtime story, so Mom tells him one--but unlike humans, guinea pigs have 1,500-pound ancestors, who are at the center of Mother guinea pig's story. Mom explains that eight million years ago, "guinea pigs like us weren't sweet, cute, and little. . . . No one brought us to school for show and tell." She goes on to talk about the great big guinea pigs (a wonderful double-page spread that has to be turned vertically for full advantage) and relates how they lived, what they looked like, and how they spread to the Americas. Thanks to the snappy dialogue, this is catalogued as fiction, but it is full of factual information (which Mom says she read in the torn newspaper in their cage; in fact, the bibliography mentions an article in the New York Times). Roth produces her typically super collage art made of torn papers. She manages to make her guinea pigs look equally adorable (in the present) and ferocious (in the past.) Some of the questions raised about the facts are made clear in the bibliography, but a longer author's note would have better served the story.^B Still, this is great. Ilene Cooper
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Bloomsbury USA Childrens
• Publication date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1582347247
• ISBN 13: 9781582347240
• Binding: Hardcover
• Illustrator: Roth Susan L.
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 32