Open House! If All the Animals Came Inside by Eric Pinder

"THE LIONS WOULD ROAR AS THEY SPRAWLED ON THE FLOOR.
THE LEMURS WOULD LOLLYGAG RIGHT BY THE DOOR.

MY DADDY WOULD TRY TO SIT DOWN IN HIS CHAIR.
HE'D HOLLER AND WHOOP WITH A PORCUPINE THERE!"

It's an amazing house party as a boy imagines what might happen if all the wild animals he knows wandered in and decided to be house pets.

What fun! His little sister screams and makes herself scarce. But our boy is delighted. What would a panda pick or a skunk select for a snack? ANYTHING THEY WANT!

LUNCH, MUNCH,
BURP, CRUNCH!

WHEN ALL OF THE ANIMALS NEEDED A DRINK,
THEY'D SLOBBBER AND DROOL ALL OVER THE SINK!

Mom laments the lack of manners, but our boy enjoys bathtime with an octopus, hiding with a hippo, and revels in the glorious mess as the animals run amok upstairs and down.

But messy house guests can wear out their welcome, and even the young host begins to regret opening the front door to this herd. Hospitality remorse has begun to set in.

FROM SUNSET TO SUNLIGHT THE WOLVES AND THE OWLS
WOULD KEEP US AWAKE WITH THEIR HOOTS AND HOWLS.

Our boy may now be imagining ways to evict his wild and crazy guests, but author Eric Pinder and illustrator Marc Brown (Arthur Adventures) have a zoological field day with this premise. Eric Pinder spins out rhyming couplets with reckless glee, and Marc Brown piles up pages filled with collaged paper, corrugated cardboard, and gobs of gouache with artistic abandon, even including one of his Arthur books in the mess, in a wild ruckus of a romp in their new If All the Animals Came Inside (Little, Brown, 2012), a Dr. Doolittle-ish fantasy delight. It's all in good fun, as young readers laugh along and chime in on the refrain--"when all of the animals came INSIDE!"

BUT, OH, WHAT A WILD AND WONDERFUL RIDE,
WHEN ALL THE ANIMALS CAME INSIDE!