The Great Zoo Hullabaloo!
Mark Carthew and Anil Tortop
New Frontier Publishing

An unusual and unexpected silence greets zoo-keepers Jess and Jack when they open the zoo gates one morning. But where, oh where are all the animals?

The observant young keepers spot all sorts of evidence of their recent presence and realise that the animals have left a trail of feathers, footprints and ‘scats’ (poo).

They decide to split up and Jess’s parting words to Jack as he starts scooping up the poops are to ‘keep an eye out for that rascally rat.’ That’s a wonderful ‘Look – he’s behind you’ opportunity for listeners.

As the sun starts to sink, Jess is still searching when she hears drifting on the breeze, all kinds of musical sounds.

Then comes a FLASH in the sky as a flare goes off, (She’s also instructed Jack to send up a flare should he find himself in trouble – so is he?)

Jess follows the floating feathers towards the light, which as she draws near, she sees is coming from a forest up ahead.

Suddenly from the bushes, Jack emerges and he leads her to where sitting around a fire making music are all the missing animals. They’re having a whale of a time hopping, bopping, tooting, hooting, whistling, and kangaroo plays a didgeridoo – what a hullabaloo. (Wonderful language play in the form of onomatopoeia and alliteration is dropped into the rhyming text here)
What’s it all in aid of though?

Drawing in closer, they see, curled up cosily in a zookeeper’s shoe is a baby roo: – ‘Softly she slept in the warm furry bed, / flamingo feathers tucked under her head.’

Right up beside her however is a coiled snake holding aloft a celebratory offering. Time to waken the sleeper from her slumbers …

Then all that’s left to do is sing a special song before wending their way home by the light of the moon.

With a wonderful assortment of creatures and musical instruments portrayed by Anil Tortop in his effervescent scenes of the animals’ antics absolutely bursting with sound, (that rat manages to get itself into many of them) and Mark Carthew’s splendid read aloud text, the book is a superb amalgam of the visual and verbal. A gift for listeners and readers aloud too: get out those instruments, bring on the HULLABALOO!

More inspired Anil Tortop illustrations can be found in:

Scaredy Cat
Heather Gallagher and Anil Tortop
New Frontier Publishing

A little girl has lost her pet: ‘Have you seen my Scaredy Cat? /He’s afraid of this and afraid of that!’ she tells us as she searches high and low.
Bees, towering trees, Granny’s sneeze – a super duper kind – noises, certain toys, climbing, sprawling, brawling boys, hoses, noses, muck, ducks and garbage trucks,

all these things and more have him running scared: but where has he chosen to hide?

Could it be among the books or hooks? His owner can deal with those (love her attitude)

as well as the crooks, so where has he gone, this hissing, erm … moggie, that object of her affections?
The combination of Heather Gallagher’s frolicsome, bouncy rhyme and Tortop’s funny scenes (love all the varying viewpoints) is a delightfully entertaining romp of friendship and tease.