Elise Hurst

In order to appeal to a child audience, picture books often deal with similar subjects or themes. To compete in the marketplace, they therefore need a point of difference – something in the artist’s style, the author’s approach, the design of the book to set them apart.

What do these five picture books have in common? Well, they are all about animals, but they range from pre-school books such as Shutting the Chooks in, through middle primary with Gezani and the Tricky Baboon, to books for older readers such as I Saw Nothing. They also vary generically: The Elephants’ Big Day Out and Sherlock Bones are fantasies, Gezani and the Tricky Baboon is a retelling of an African folk tale, and the other two are realistic stories.