Life with my family by Renee Hooker and Karl Jones, illustrated by Kathryn Durst

An older sister reflects that "Life with my family is not always easy." She imagines what it would be like if they were a different family... maybe pelicans, buffalo, or even wombats! But even animals have their problems and she eventually decides "while we're together, there's nowhere else I'd rather be."

Durst shows an exuberantly diverse family; a father with dark skin and curly hair, mother Asian mother, and mixed race children from the narrator with dreadlocks to her light-skinned, red-haired brother and baby sibling with a tuft of curly dark hair. The imaginative pictures of the family as animals are humorous and varied; her wombat brother who gets taken to the zoo has a purple bowtie and tuft of red hair while in jellyfish form the family retains their hairstyles, glasses, earrings, and that same bowtie.

The final spread lists more collective nouns and some extra pictures of the family as a bloat of pink hippopotamuses, colony of penguins, and parliament of owls. I've never understood the obsession with collective nouns - every staff member who saw this immediately pounced on it and made cooing sounds - but it must be like sloths, which I also don't get the appeal of.

Verdict: A light and amusing story; there's not a lot of substance here (it doesn't really make sense for the girl to imagine them all as animals when things are chaotic) but the warm, loving family resonates throughout the story and the rich diversity is a welcome sight.

ISBN: 9781524789374; Published October 16, 2018 by Penguin Workshop; Review copy provided by publisher; Donated to the library