Ross Recommends: About Animals Series by Owen Davies

As a child, I was obsessed with animals. So much so, that for many years, until I was around 14 or 15, I wanted to be a vet. While that career path never happened for me (I don’t think I’m emotionally cut out for that type of work), I still love animals and have never tire of learning more about them. As you can imagine, I was then over the moon when I discovered the About Animals Series by award winning illustrator Owen Davies, which began in 2015 with the fabulous Mad About Monkeys book. Since then, this series has exploded in popularity and diversity, and now includes fantastic spotlights on cats, octopuses, beetles, frogs, penguins, crocodiles and sharks, with a new one on bears coming out in July of this year. Each book is targeted at primary school children and, packed full of gorgeous and colourful retro-scientific style illustrations, brings these different groups of animals to life with interesting facts, species showcases and mythological context throughout history. For example, from my favourite Obsessive About Octopuses I recently learnt that the mimic octopus, while completely harmless, is able to change its shape, colour and skin texture to mimic over 15 different species of toxic sea animal to protect itself from predators...how genius is that! I like to think there is a life lesson in there too, that even if you don’t feel confident, by acting like you are you might just find you were all along. This series is absolutely perfect for a budding animal enthusiast, adult and child alike, and promises to be hours of entertainment.

You can purchase a copy of these books here.