Jenny Broom (text), Katie Scott (illus.) Animalium (Mini Gift Edition), Five Mile Press, Sept 2016, 64pp., $16.95 (hbk), ISBN 9781760404307
Described on the back cover as the ‘miniature museum of Animalium’ and ‘a pocket-sized edition’ of the original, this small book is substantially reduced in size from the original large format 28 x 37.5 cm volume published in 2014. Measuring only 17.5 x 13 cm, not only is this edition physically smaller but the number of pages has been reduced from 96 to 64.
In order to make the necessary changes to downsize the contents, drastic alterations have been made to both what is included and the text. Gone is a lot of the overarching structure of the book which gave it its logical arrangement as a walk through the galleries of a museum. The preface is gone, the table of contents is gone, the tree of life diagram of the animal kingdom is gone, the introductions to each gallery are gone, the brief descriptions of each animal in the captions to the illustrations are gone and the index is gone. The text has been abridged with some animals combined onto one double-page spread (sharks, skates and rays, for example) while some have been deleted (e.g. albatrosses). While most of the images with the feel of historical scientific illustrations are retained, they are reduced in size.
Overall, this small book retains its attractive appearance. It is reasonably priced and much easier to shelve both at home and in a library or classroom. However the loss of much of the logical structure of the original means that it is not as easy to follow and information about many of the animals in the illustrations is lacking.
Reviewed by Lynne Babbage
