Toby and the Ice Giants
Joe Lillington
Flying Eye Books
In the company of Ice Age tundra dweller, Toby the bison, readers are taken way back some 20,000 years in time to the last glacial period when earth was home to some gigantic animals. With an assurance to other family members, “I’m big now. I’m not scared!” young Toby ventures out to explore. So begins a series of encounters with a host of amazing megafauna, the first being via a head-on collision with a bad-tempered woolly rhinoceros spoiling for a fight.

Thankfully the massive-clawed magatherium he meets next is more interested in using its claws for procuring food from a tree so Toby moves on seawards.
“I’m Toby, I can run really fast!” he informs a Glypton. This thick-shelled beast is friendly enough unlike the ferocious long-toothed predatory Smilodon

from which Toby rushes,  past the short-faced bear, the flying Teratorn before coming upon some ice age humans

whereupon he decides it’s time to head home.
This book successfully interweaves narrative and factual information making this one that can be enjoyed on more than one level. Into Joe Lillington’s dramatic watercolour illustrations are inserted the storyline and speech bubbles and the factual details appear alongside (or below). In addition there is a comparative size spread, a basic explanation about the ending of the ice-age, some additional animals from the time that Toby didn’t come upon together with an author’s note stating that Toby’s adventure has been telescoped into a single day, and a glossary.
All in all, another quality production from Flying Eye, a hugely appealing introduction to the period and a likely starting point for further Ice Age forays.

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