Stephen Michael King, My Dad Is a Giraffe Scholastic, 1 August 2015, 24 pp., $16.99 (hbk), ISBN 978174362594-1
If your Dad was an animal, what would he be? In this gentle and whimsical book by multi award winning author and illustrator Stephen Michael King, the child’s father is a Giraffe, gentle and fun, tall and fast. Of course, the father is not really a giraffe, as the pictures on the first and last pages reveal, but the charming story explores the similarities.
With only a few words on each page combined with King’s trademark fluid, colourful, expressive and often humorous pictures, love and warmth ooze off the pages. In this traditional family structure, everyone is treated with affection and respect – mum (a zebra) is not absent, and acknowledged as being special too. This feel good family read, to be delivered with a cuddle (and maybe even a tickle) has been released in time for Father’s Day.
reviewed by Debra Tidball
