Let's start off with this title. It deserves a round of applause! Full of 26 emotions, one for each letter of the alphabet, this book is written to expand vocabularies and grow emotional literacy. Each emotion has a accompanying poem and animal illustration that children will be able to tie together to make a full picture of how to temper or embrace each emotion.

It states in the opening poem this book is good for learning new emotions, and new vocabulary - it's not wrong.
I think the 'key words' are great ones for little ones to understand, I like the emotions being compared to animals too.

However, I do think it's a little bit too 'wordy' for a young persons book. I cannot imagine my nieces or nephews staying engaged for very long.

Nice idea - but just don't think its fit for its target audience.

The verses of An Emotional Menagerie, as well as the general idea and themes, are highly reminiscent of the gently moralizing childen's poem of the Victorian age, like A Children's Garden of Verses, and brought me back to my own childhood (no, not in the Victorian era, I'm not actually that old). Part of this feeling comes from the fact that the vocabulary level seems pretty high for the overall age group, but it might be the kind of book a child can grow into. The concept is fun and clever - emotions (twenty-six of them, one for each letter of the alphabet) rendered as animals, with sing-song verses that explore and explain each. The emotion-to-animal choices are spot-on, such as boredom as a jellyfish that flops around limply on a beach and can sting you but needs to get washed away back into the sea; embarrassment as a pufferfish, swollen and prickly and sticking out like a sore thumb; uncertainty as a chameleon torn between different color choices.

I appreciate the fact that 'negative' emotions aren't, as it were, penalized; the reader isn't told not to feel certain feelings, but given the emotional literacy to understand where these emotions come from, and why, and how to handle them (for example, noting that guilt, a hangdog-faced dog, can in small doses help us to do better next time; or that jealousy, a green serpent, is natural but rather than coveting the things others have, one can use it "as a guide to plan the life you'd like to lead, the path you hope to find").

Last but not least, the art is sharp and bright and evocative, the animals clearly expressing their respective emotions - a melancholy hippo wallowing in the mud, a panicking chicken running around in a frenzy of feathers, or a tranquil cow lounging in a flower-dotted field.

Overall, An Emotional Menagerie is a thoughtful and engaging collection of images and poems to help young readers understand and handle their own emotions, through a clever concept, gentle verse, and imaginative illustrations.

Thank you to NetGalley and Duckworth Books/The School of Life for the advance review copy.