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"Good father-child bonding books are rarer than hens' teeth, but Sidman and Swan pull it off with this charming offering . . ."

--Children's Literature

Just Us Two:

Poems About Animal Dads

illustrated by Susan Swan,

Millbrook Press 2000

Ages 4-8 ISBN: 0761315632

Reader's Guide (click here)

Awards

Children's Literature 2001 Choice List

CBC Showcase Book

Infolink Best Book of the Year 2000

Reviews

Children's Literature

"Good father-child bonding books are rarer than hens' teeth, but Sidman and Swan pull it off with this charming offering. Joyce Sidman's poems are humorous, meaty, and adventurous in their construction from free-form to haiku, while Susan Swan's cut-paper illustrations swim and hop off the page in busy colors. All that's missing is bedtime and Dad's strong arm around small shoulders."

Children's Book Council

"A wonderful exploration of the relatively unknown habits of animal dads. The order of the poems is dictated by successive stages of childhood and capture the voices of each animal perfectly, making this a perfect book for the classroom, bedtime, or anytime!"

School Library Journal

"The layering of boldly colored, textured, hand-painted paper gives the illustrations a three-dimensional look. The results are dramatic."

Kirkus Reviews

"Poems about a dozen unusual animal dads are exuberantly illustrated with cut-paper collages. . . Animal lovers will enjoy these animal oddities, which seem surprisingly human in their behavior . . . Poems have a bouncy appeal . . . sliding, jumping, swimming, and swinging across the page."

How this book began . . .

Animal books were always favorites in our household. While looking at them with my young sons, I read a lot about animal moms . . . but not much about dads. Yet intriguing facts slipped through once in a while (fish fathers that kept their eggs in their mouths? Penguin dads that went two months without eating??), and I decided to investigate.

What I found was a whole world of furry, feathery and scaly fathers that do extraordinary things to protect their young. As I watched my husband and sons together, I began to notice many similarities between animal dads and human ones! It was only a hop, skip and jump to finding the "voice" of each animal, and writing from that point of view.

Several scientists gave doing cutting-edge research on animal fathers gave me information, including Judy Stamps at the University of California-Davis, who studies Australian Budgerigar Parakeets. She kept referring to the parakeets as "budgies." The Beanie Babies craze was in full swing at the time, and thus the poem "Budgie Babies" was born!

I love the photographs of the animals that my editor at Millbrook Press found, which accompany the nonfiction notes at the end of the book. There's just something about animals . . .

Along the Nile

"What delight

to swim along the oozy, snoozy Nile

to swing my tail from side to side,

stretch my POP-UP eyeballs wide,

dunk and splash and dive and glide

along the oozy, snoozy,

deep and cruisy Nile . . . "

Dive and wriggle and swoop with animal dads as they care for their young! Capturing the voices of penguins to giant water bugs, monkeys to crocodiles, this book is exuberantly illustrated with brilliant cut-paper collage. It includes photos and nonfiction notes about each animal.