Wombat by Philip Bunting

Omnibus, 2020. ISBN: 9781760972370.
(Age: 3 - adult) Highly recommended. What a wonderful book about wombats and all those things that the word can imply. Who'd have thought you'd find youngbat or oldbat or chit chat or thisbat or thatbat in a picture book about wombats, but Phil Bunting's highly original sense of humour and off the planet encouragement of interaction and play with his audience, young and old hits the spot again.
The pairing of each illustration with just one word magnifies the meaning of that word. Eyes will dart from the word and its half rhyme with wombat to the image before them. The dour look on the wombat's face, its browns and greys, simple arm movements, all add to the humour on each page. The eyes reflect the way the wombat is thinking, and children will love replicating the wombat on their own pages, seeing how they can make the animal come to life as Bunting does. A wonderful read aloud, kids will pester adults for a re-reading, marvelling at the rhyming of the words, the links between each of the wombats illustrated, the conclusion of two wombats coming together, while foraging the few words which tell of a wombat's life. The endpapers reprise the flowers found throughout the book, and Bunting even includes a laugh on the publication page.
Theme: Wombats, Humour, Rhyming.
Fran Knight