In this wildly entertaining counting book, animal camouflage is the name of the game while the oblivious lone hunter (1 Hunter) stalking through the jungle wielding a menacing rifle becomes a running joke of sorts — in fact it soon becomes unclear who’s doing the hunting, after all!
The reader, on the other hand, is privy to the irony and will have a ball spotting and counting the various creatures who are hiding in plain sight.
Pat Hutchins’s inimitable bright and bold graphics have an almost hypnotic effect here and you’d be hard-pressed to tear your eyes away from the colours and clever details on every page.
On a side note [*spoiler alert!] it’s oddly cathartic to watch the animals outwit the hunter and send him fleeing for dear life, especially since, depressingly, that doesn’t seem to happen enough in real life.