3rd, 4th, 5th, Middle School ; Hard Cover, Picture Book ; Recommended

Animals that Might Exist by Professor O’Logist, by Stéphane Nicolet and Jean-Baptiste Drouot

An absurd collection of animal drawings that have only been seen by the now-missing Professor O’Logist. A tongue-in-cheek book of drawings and scientific descriptions of the craziest collections of animals you’ve never seen, but that doesn’t mean they might NOT exist! Professor O’Logist even created his own classification system for organizing the animals, including the soft animals, the disgusting animals, and the not-useful animals, to name a few. Many of the animals remind me of creatures you might encounter in a Roald Dahl book, the drawings are charming and the writing is both serious and silly. This is a book I think students will have fun giggling over as they flip through the bizarre taxonomy and then find inspiration to discover rare animals themselves. For a middle school library, I imagine this probably more of a display book, rather than one that gets checked out much unless it’s by budding artists.