Battling crisis with comedy

A funny book. Birds, animals in funny situations, cracking puns. Did you know there were beetles, sharks, shrimps, seahorses, moths, toads, butterflies and a centipede named after the tiger? Even the tiger on the page featuring them, didn’t.

A beautiful book; illustrated in detail with meticulously made drawings to keep the eye engaged. Much attention has been paid to ensuring the subjects look as close to real as possible, with a comic edge.

An informative book. Along with ducks and penguins and deer and the big cats, you meet animals, birds, and insects too; and learn things about them that you never knew before.

But above all, it is a serious book; celebrating Nature’s wonderous creatures who live their secret, colourful, eventful lives, and fulfil the functions they were created for before vanishing into the great nothingness. It is also a disturbing book, for in the pages you will see laid bare the greed and foolishness of man who hunts tigers for claws and skin, elephants for ivory and sharks for soup.

Listen then to the song of the Giant Guitarfish: ‘I might end up as bycatch before you count ten/Which is why I am critically endangered on I C U N/ You do nothing about overfishing despite so much being said/Oh how I’d like to break this guitar over your head!’ And, here’s one more that points to the many climate disasters bugging the planet.

The Earth says: ‘Groundwater extraction has caused a tilt in the Earth’s axis!/This polar drift is expected to cause climate imbalances worldwide/Yeah, you’ve been making my head spin lately/AND NOW I AM GOING TO SPIN YOURS!’