Animal-loving kids will devour I'm a Dumbo Octopus!: A Graphic Guide to Cephalopods, Anne Lambelet's charming, colorful, and funny guide to everybody's favorite eight-armed sea creatures.
Grimpy the dumbo octopus knows everything about the other cephalopods in the ocean. Grimpy knows how underwater camouflage works, which octopuses can use tools, and how cephalopods master all kinds of escapes. Grimpy even knows that "cuttlefish use up to 75 different color combinations to communicate," which is approximately the same "number of words a human toddler can say." But Grimpy can't fly like the Japanese flying squid, squirt ink, or produce light. Is there anything that makes a dumbo octopus special?
Not only is I'm a Dumbo Octopus! laden with cool facts--such as the difference between octopus arms and octopus tentacles--but Lambelet's trademark art style makes every squid, octopus, cuttlefish, and nautilus a cuddly friend. Lambelet (Dogs and Their People) uses expressive character design to create a quiet and agreeable fictional story within her work of nonfiction. Grimpy's emotional struggle with what makes being a dumbo octopus interesting may be familiar to some children and will hopefully encourage readers to embrace their own--and everyone else's--uniqueness. Backmatter includes a useful guide to the anatomy of a cephalopod as well as a photo of a real dumbo octopus (which is specially "built to survive in one of the deepest, darkest environments on the whole planet!"). I'm a Dumbo Octopus! is humorous, exciting, and perfect for fans of Sharks: A Mighty Bite-y History or the Narwhal and Jelly series. --Nicole Brinkley, bookseller and writer