Reviews for Fifteen Animals!

The average rating for Fifteen Animals! based on 2 reviews is 5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2019-04-24 00:00:00 Robert J. Meadows Fifteen Animals is the most critically-acclaimed installment in Sandra Boynton's "Animals" saga, and not without reason. In passing you might expect it to be yet another lurid dime-store novel--but don't let the cover fool you. It's a work of transformative depth, taking the board book genre to new heights and subverting all the familiar tropes for a ride you won't soon forget. The narrator's turtle is most often the subject of literary scholarship (and in all fairness the conspicuous absence of his father, Simon James Alexander Ragsdale the Second, is poignant and worthy of exploration). But I find that such myopic focus on our diapsid friend gives too little credit to the ensemble cast of lively characters who make up the bulk of the book's page count. For example, textual analysis by a computer reveals that Bob and his bunny wife Bob receive equal treatment to Ragsdale, by word count--greater if you count their children. Yet their story is practically ignored. If we look closer, give them the time they merit, we would likely find that they contain multitudes. Page 9, Fig. 1 (an illustration from the author's original manuscript) provides the jumping off point for a different mystery: the apparent passing of Bob, who as recently as the front jacket of the book appeared to be alive and well, if a little timorous. The text devotes little time to this unique circumstance other than an impression in the corner of the number 5, numerological token of carelessness and ancient symbol of marriage. This and other clues lead us to ask: with whose marriage was Bob careless? His own or another's? Was it Bob's? We might assume it was with Bob or his bunny wife Bob that he was caught (either "in the act" as it were, or by his own conscience), leading him to a tragic end--but this would be too hasty an assumption. It should be noted that Bob and Bob (though the exact nature of their arrangement is uncertain) are also cohabitating, and their relationship hasn't yielded so much as a single batch of caviar. Why do we always see them tight-lipped around each other, or even facing in opposite directions as if to shut out the fact of each other's existence? Has something come between them? Is their fishbowl world too big to keep them together? I'm fascinated by the stories that happen off the page and behind the scenes in this deceptively complex little novella, even obsessed, and if the nights I've spent awake are any indication, you will be fascinated too. I give it my heartiest recommendation and once my son is old enough to read, I'm all but certain he will add his own.

Review # 2 was written on 2020-11-19 00:00:00 Chad Bowling This book has a surprise ending, but it doesn't have to do with the number of animals. There's 15. 5-5 stars