"Animalia" by Graeme Base, published by Harry N. Abrams, New York, 1987. First US Edition.

Dust jacket, hard boards have the same design as dj; folio, large format: 9.3/4" x 13.1/4"; pale-green endpapers, 34 pages, each page is a large colorful plate; there is a small dark stain on the bottom of the pages at the binding area [see photos]; very good condition.

Animalia is an alliterative alphabet book and contains twenty-six illustrations, one for each letter of the alphabet. Each illustration features an animal from the animal kingdom (A is for alligator and armadillo, B is for butterfly, etc.) along with a short poem utilizing the letter of the page for many of the words. The illustrations contain many other objects beginning with that letter that the reader can try to identify (however, there are not necessarily "a thousand things, or maybe more", as the author states). As an additional challenge, the author has hidden a picture of himself as a child in every picture.

Animalia won the Young Australian's Best Book Award in 1987 for Best Picture Story Book. The Children's Book Council of Australia designated Animalia a 1987 Picture Book of the Year: Honour Book. Kid's Own Australian Literature Awards named Animalia the 1988 Picture Book Winner.

"Graeme Base was born in England in 1958 and moved to Australia as a child. He graduated from the Swinburne College of Art in Melbourne in 1978. He has illustrated several books, including "My Grandmother Lived in Gooligulch (1983), which he both wrote and illustrated, and "The Days of teh Dinosaurs" (Jan Anderson, 1985).

The illustration for "Animalia" took more than three years to complete, and represent a major body of work for this extraordinarily talented young Australian artist." [from the d/j]

US: Media (c.2-4 days) --------- $12.50
Canada: 1st Class (c.2-4 weeks) -- $29.50
World: 1st Class (c.2-5 weeks) --- $43.50