Caramel reviews Invented by Animals by Christiane Dorion and Gosia Herba

Every summer the book bunnies take the month of July off. For his last review before the summer break, Caramel chose to talk today about a fun book he read recently: Invented by Animals, written by Christiane Dorion, illustrated by Gosia Herba, and published in 2021. As usual, Sprinkles is taking notes and asking questions.

Sprinkles: So Caramel, tell me a bit about Invented by Animals. It has an inviting subtitle: “Meet the creatures who inspired our everyday technologies.”

Caramel: This book has a lot of different animals telling us about what inventions or ideas for inventions they gave to humans.

S: What is that supposed to mean? Can you give me an example?

C: My favorite is an eagle telling us how his eyeballs work. And how well he sees.

S: Hmm, so it is not that the eagle itself has invented neat eyes, but humans have been inspired by how his eyes work.

C: Yes.

S: That makes sense. Are there any examples of the other kind, where some animal is doing something interesting or has invented something intentionally to solve a problem and the humans are inspired by it to do something themselves?

C: Yes. For example, the paper wasp chews up bark and mixes it with its saliva to create paper. That is one of the ways humans figured out how to make paper themselves. In fact today’s paper is made more or less in that same way.

S: I don’t think humans chew bark to make paper.

C: Nor do bunnies, Sprinkles, I know. But the idea is about the same.

S: I see.

S: I know you love your facts, Caramel. Did you learn new facts from this book?

C: Yes, a ton! Almost all of the book was new to me.

S: That is awesome, so you must have enjoyed the book immensely.

C: Yes, I did.

S: So give the a three-word description of the book then.

C: Colorful, factful, and nature-ful.

S: Hmm, why don’t we rephrase that and say, full of color, facts, and cool nature?

C: I can work with that!

S: Okay. What else can you tell us about the book?

C: I love the pictures! They are not quite anatomically correct; all animals have mouths on the front of their heads, and eyes and so on, and they are wearing clothes. Some even have shoes.

S: Hmm, so they are anthropomorphized, I suppose.

C: Exactly.

S: So how did that make you feel as a bunny?

C: Well, I have eyes and a mouth in the front of my head, too, so that works for me.

S: I guess those features make the illustrations more friendly and fun, right?

C: Yep. But I wished that they had some things about bunnies. It made me feel kind of excluded.

S: I see. But they could not have something from all animals. The book would be too long.

C: That’s true. But I still kind of wanted a bunny invention there.

S: I can totally sympathize.

C: They had an albatross even. Come on!

S: I understand Caramel. But other than that, you did enjoy the book, right?

C: Yep, very much so. Maybe they can write a second volume, and they can include a bunny or two in that one.

S: We can always hope. Okay, Caramel, this is a good time to wrap up this review. Is there something you want to tell our readers?

C: Stay tuned for more book bunny reviews! We will be back in August!