Yoga Animals: A wild introduction to kid-friendly poses by Paige Towler, with a foreward by Tara Stiles

Even when I was younger (and skinnier, and in better shape, and, well, younger) I have never been particularly flexible. So I always eye yoga books a bit... askance. Of course, most small children are very bendy, and there's nothing they like more than twisting into kooky shapes, and animal poses are always fun, so I took a look at this anyways.

I.... liked it. I *might* even consider a little yoga myself. Maybe. If I ever have floor space to do it on...

I would skip the foreward - I had to look up Tara Stiles and apparently she's a model turned yoga instructor and promotes "wellness" stuff like detoxes. Her foreward was ok, mostly talking about how yoga with her daughter is about having fun and being inspired to move though.

Each spread features a different animal and a rhymed couplet describing their action. It's accompanied by an instruction for the child to move like the animal and a photograph of a child demonstrating the move. There's also a more descriptive set of instructions. The backgrounds are big, splashy colored circles with mandala-like decorations.

Children will reach like a giraffe, balance like a flamingo, bend like a gorilla, curl like a cat, stretch like a puppy, roar like a lion, tuck like a bunny, slide like a cobra, and sleep like a crocodile. One child, who presents white, has a chunkier build and is shown twice. There is also a black child who I think is shown twice - one picture does not show their face. One child may be latinx and two more are white. The kids are all wearing loose-fitting pants or leggings and t-shirts, no tight-fitting gym gear. I would have liked the photographs of the children to be larger - there's a lot of unused space on the page and the images are only an inch or two in size.

At the back there's an animal yoga guide, describing each pose and giving more information about the animal. For example, the gorilla bending is also called "standing forward fold" or "Uttanasana." More details about the movement are given, and the demonstrating child is shown again in two photographs. There's also a short paragraph about the mountain gorilla.

Verdict: This would be a fun book to work through with kids in a library program, classroom setting, or just at home. It would also be a great virtual program if you scheduled one pose and one animal to learn about each week!

ISBN: 9781426337529; Published April 2020 by National Geographic; Review copy provided by the publisher; Donated to the library