WHO LOVES LITTLE LEMUR?

A playful story set in a faraway place about lemurs, love, and family.

It’s hard to miss Little Lemur as the star of this book. In the first image, his large smiling face peers through rainforest foliage and a leaf balances on his head like a jaunty beret. Uncluttered illustrations with stylized, simplified landscapes and solid backgrounds form the backdrop for an active day in Little Lemur’s life. He and the rest of his lemur family have large, expressive eyes, and their striking ringed tails sometimes intertwine to create hearts. Most female lemurs have a flower tucked behind one ear, and Grandma wears glasses, but their behavior is pure lemur. Or it is? Rhyming couplets weave in the facts of Little Lemur’s life (young lemurs are pups, and Little Lemur’s family group is a troop) and allow readers to observe Little Lemur’s day as he is snuggled, fed, and groomed. He nurses and eats figs and crickets. He climbs, tussles, and chases with siblings and cousins, and sometimes he needs help. Readers will have to rotate the book 90 degrees to take in the illustration revealing the dizzying height of the scary cliff where Little Lemur is stranded. Flowing couplets include unusual words for vocabulary building and discussion (tamarind, gambol, tweak, beckon), and creative wordsmithing captures lemur antics (“Auntie beckons Little Lemur to prancity-prance. / The whole troop joins in their jump-jump dance”) and the book’s overriding theme of familial love. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

An action-packed introduction to a young lemur and his family that might not be very different from readers’ own.