Call Me Gorgeous by Giles and Alexandra Milton - review

Call Me Gorgeous by Giles and Alexandra Milton
I have the eyes of a lemur and the beak of an octopus, the skin of a monitor lizard and the broken toes of an unfortunate debutante.

Actually, none of that is true. What I have are the eyes of a Scots-Irish Protestant and the posture of a Hungarian peasant - my fractious temperament is like that of my New England ancestors and my ability to tan comes from generations of watermen on Maryland's Eastern Shore.

Pieces of various creatures (eye of frog, feet of chicken) lead the reader of the happy, beautiful Call Me Gorgeous! to expect a monstrous chimera, when instead, the creature at the end of this book is quite fabulous - and she knows it! Colored pencils and collages of handmade paper make the teeth of the alligator look sharp and the ears of the pig soft, the chameleon's tail scaly and the bat wings veiny.

We are all hybrids, and this book exalts our stitched-together-ness without whomping the reader over the head with bullhorned messages about DIFFERENCES! CHERISHING THEM! and LABELS! BOO TO LABELS! Would make a fun read-aloud.

Endpaper bonus: each animal shown in its entirety.