Night Creatures!: Ready-to-Read Level 2

K-Gr 2–This series entry finds Dr. Ick and Sam the bulldog (Ick’s comedic foil) extolling the unique qualities of the denizens of the dark—nocturnal creatures who fly, crawl, scamper, climb, and just plain look weird. Some familiar nocturnal animals, like bats and owls, are featured, as well as other night dwellers, such as Tasmanian devils and pangolins. Animal facts range from the simple (owls digest their prey whole) to the more obscure (the slow loris has a venomous bite). Read as a part of the “Super Gross” series, this book might give a few chuckles and new tidbits to sate the appetite of animal fact fans, but standing on its own, it struggles at many turns. The combination of loose, goofy cartoon narrators in a setting conceived as classroom and bedroom—it’s nighttime after all—with stock photos of animals only lightly edited to blend into the book’s visual style feels underdeveloped. As a text for beginning readers, it focuses heavily on scientific vocabulary and less so on narrative flow, offering definitions and somewhat idiosyncratic pronunciation guides for a small selection of words. The focus on challenging vocabulary may please some highly focused readers and stymie others fresh to independent reading.