Pssst by: Adam Rex

This book is really cute and could be a very interactive story for a class to read aloud. The story is very simple; there is only one human character and the rest are animals at the zoo. A little girl goes to the zoo one day by herself and as she is walking along, minding her own business, she hears a “Pssst.” She realizes that it is a gorilla speaking to her through his cage. He speaks to her only to ask her to get him a tire because the swing in his cage broke. She agrees and continues through the zoo only to be greeted by several other animals in the same fashion, each of them with their own request. Though she is frustrated with all of the requests, she agrees to each one and ends up going across the street to buy everything and passes them out to each of her new friends.
The most entertaining part of the book is the illustrations. The pictures and dialogue are set up as comic strips within the story, and the transition pages when the main character moves from animal to animal are different scenes of the zoo. Each picture changes as she moves around the facility and each animal’s “pssst” is illustrated uniquely. The pictures of the animals are really cute and on every page there are silly little quotes or animations that are not blatantly obvious, but add a lot to the pictures.
I do not think that this book will become one of my all time favorites, but it would be good to have in a classroom. It does not teach any overarching lesson, but it could be used to help identify animals and otherwise just as a nice break.