A Spider Danced a Cosy Jig

B.A. Robinson was a freelance reviewer from Toronto.

Layton is a well-established and respected poet. This latest anthology deals solely with animals. While the book has been prominently featured as a children’s book, it definitely is not meant solely for that audience. Many of the poems have surprises in them and will bring a chuckle to the reader (of any age), while others, like “The Bull Calf,” are realistic but nonetheless upsetting. They are all vintage Layton, like “Whose Zoo?”:

God made the viper, the shark, the tsetse fly.

He made the hyena, the vulture, the stoat.

By the time He made man

He had the combination down perfect.

Malish’s illustrations are as unusual as the poems. Each animal is part-human: the spider has seven legs and winkingly holds a rose aloft; the perverse gulls have faces superimposed on their breasts; the peacock sports formal dress.