The distinctive Collins trademark bold colour backgrounds to each page serve to highlight the hugely characterful and expressive animals that should be the stars of The First Book of Animals except, as we the audience can blatantly see, a very excitable dog has decided that he is the only animal that counts. He has acquired a pencil (no doubt from the artist) which is going to come in very handy. Dog enjoys the first page This is a Dog. It certainly is – very perky and proud- but he doesn’t want to lose the spotlight. He makes the cat very nervous as he peeks into her page, he frankly laughs at the poor rabbit and cannot resist chasing the squirrel( where the side of the page cleverly becomes a tree) Children will delight in what he does to the giraffe and I love the fact that we never see the giraffe’s head- he is obviously too tall! But he pushes his luck with the bear, gorilla, crocodile and dares to try to dress up as an elephant so they all give chase and this is where his pencil comes in very handy! Minimal text allows a young audience to tell their own story and they will relish every scrap of humour. A laugh aloud treat for everyone to enjoy (and don’t miss the authors dedication to his own dog ‘Who taught me the meaning of irony by destroying some of the artwork from this book.’
Uh-oh! An excitable (but very loveable) dog has found his way into this First Animals book and he will NOT let any of the other animals take their turn. Dogs are far more important, after all! And when the other animals get angry, this dog comes up with a very cunning plan to outwit them . . .
Ross Collins' primary 1 teacher, Mrs Spears, told his parents that he should go to art school. 13 years went by until he was finally 'old enough' to get into the Glasgow School of Art. Can you believe that? – 13 years. On graduating he won the Macmillan Prize for his first picture book. Since then he's illustrated over 100 books for children and written a few of them too. Several of them have won enormous glittering awards which he keeps in a box in Latvia. Ross' book The Elephantom was recently adapted into a critically acclaimed play by those clever people at the National Theatre who made that 'War Horse' thing. When he's not creating children's books he enjoys working on character development for animation studios like Laika and Disney. He also likes walking in the Scottish glens with his dog Hugo, who is an idiot and his partner Jacqui, who is not.
