ANIMALS IN PANTS by Suzy Levinson, illustrated by Kristen and Kevin Howdeshell

Anyone who knows me well knows that I am an obsessive planner. I don’t do ANYTHING at the last minute. My much-more-spontaneous friends will attest that when they dare call me asking if I want to grab lunch or a go to a movie that same day, my typical response is: “Seriously? Have we met?!” (I realize this stems from my anxiety and I’m likely missing out on a lot of things because of my rigidity. Don’t worry, I’m working on it!)

Anywho! The reason I bring this up is because I was sitting at my desk a week ago, patting myself on my back because, knowing that the beginning of 2024 is going to be very busy for me, I’d managed to get ahead of a bunch of things – including already scheduling my January post for this blog. YAY ME! 

And then, I re-read the blog schedule for 2023 and realized I was supposed to post something for TODAY – DECEMBER 29^th — and I didn’t have it on my calendar!!! AHHHHH!!! 

I typically like to do author interviews, but knew I didn’t have time for that, so I quickly scanned my bookshelves and my eyes immediately gravitated to one of my favorite books of 2023, the hilarious poetry collection, ANIMALS IN PANTS, written my amazing friend and critique partner, Suzy Levinson, illustrated by Kristen and Kevin Howdeshell, and published by Cameron Kids. 

(Suzy has no idea I’m doing this. I stole her headshot from her website. Hi, Suzy!)

And so, without futher ado, I dedicate this post to…

FOUR REASONS I LOVE ANIMALS IN PANTS:

1. It’s a bunch of poems about animals. Wearing pants. That’s it. That’s the schtick. There’s no message, no universal take-away, no lessons, no back matter teaching about poetic forms, no main character who wants-something-tries-three-times-fails-then-finally-finds a-solution-and-gets-what-they-want.  It’s just a book of poems that are freakin’ funny! And it is amazing. 
   

2. Suzy is just a brilliant poet. Period. I am ridiculously long-winded and verbose (In case you couldn’t tell. lol), and so I absolutely love and appreciate Suzy’s ability to bring so much wit and wry humor using so few words. Some of her poems are insanely short, and yet she infuses them with bucket-loads of sass and sarcasm. One of my faves:

Yak Facts

According to yaks,

Pants aren’t pants.

They’re slacks.

3. The ART! It is just chef’s-kiss-awesome! I mean, take a look for yourself. The color scheme is so bright and the collage-effects are so cool (sorry, I’m not an artist, so not sure what that’s called, but I LOVE it!). The publisher could have totally gone cutesy with these illustrations, but instead went for artists who brought a groovy, swanky factor, which I think both enhances the hilarity of Suzy’s words and adds a level of sophistication to the whole book. It’s perfect.

4. It Exists. As someone who has tried to get her poetry collections published, I know how difficult it is to get the attention of U.S. editors. (If I hear “poetry is a hard sell” one more time…), so my hat goes off to anyone who has made it happen. Sorry, quick rant: I don’t know why, but from what I’ve seen, the UK and Australia seem to value poetry for kids so much more. The UK has a whole National Poetry Library that includes an entire children’s section with more than 4,000 picture books and poetry collections (I can’t wait to visit one day!). And Australia has The School Magazine, which goes out of its way to fill its pages with poetry and brings poetic joy to classrooms at all grade levels every single month. So, the mere fact that Suzy managed to get ANIMALS IN PANTS published is enough for me to love it. (And, I’m not allowed to give details, but I happen to know that Suzy has more collections in the pipeline coming soon! YAY FOR US!)

Whew! Okay, I think I pulled off my very first (and hopefully last) last-minute spontaneous blog post! I hope you’ll go out and check out at this incredible book. 

Happy New Year everyone!