Flip-a-Feather: Make Your Own Wacky Bird!

by Sara Ball

Overview

Flip and flop heads, tails, and bodies to make 1,000 remarkable birds!

From the best-selling illustrator of Mix-a-Mutt, Flip-o-saurus, and Flip-o-storic comes another book with charming artwork and die-cut pages for mix-and-match fun—this time with birds! Flip-a-Feather lets you create wacky combinations of ten types of birds, including a majestic bald eagle, an eye-popping resplendent quetzal, and an inquisitive macaroni penguin.

Each flap features a fun fact about the pictured species, and inside the front cover is a chart showing the relative sizes of the birds featured, from the hummingbird to the ostrich.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780789213822
Publisher:	Abbeville Publishing Group
Publication date:	09/29/2020
Series:	Mix-and-Match Board Books , #4
Pages:	22
Product dimensions:	12.30(w) x 10.10(h) x 0.70(d)
Age Range:	4 - 8 Years

About the Author

Sara Ball is a prolific illustrator of children’s books, including Abbeville’s Mix-a-Mutt, Flip-o-saurus, Flip-a-Feather, and Flip-o-storic.

Editorial Reviews

"A split-page format turns 10 birds into hundreds of avian chimeras in this mix-and-match portrait gallery.  As in her equally fetching Mix-a-Mutt (2018), Ball uses empty backgrounds to showcase invitingly big, bright, exactly detailed animals that somehow seem to be smiling up at viewers or down at fuzzy offspring even though they’re not anthropomorphized. Flipping heads, bodies, and hindquarters results in some odd combinations (“I’m a Snowy Owl—Ostrich—Bald Eagle bird”), but the subjects are placed, posed, and scaled so that . . . even the most unlikely transitions at least match neatly."— Kirkus Reviews

"Fans of Sara Ball’s titles Mix-a-Mutt and Flip-o-saurus will be delighted to welcome Flip-a-Feather. . . a full-color board book cut into flip-able flaps so that the youngest readers can create creatures such as Pelican-Silkie-Owl and Humming-Bald Eagle-Quetzal. . . Each flap features a fact about the pictured species, such as a keel-billed toucan’s favorite meal (fruit, insects and lizards) and the length of an ostrich’s neck (nearly a yard). Flip-a-Feather is tons of fun for children ages four and older."— Brandy Hilboldt Allport, Florida Times-Union

"This playful, oversize board book showcases a bevy of birds. . . For instance, turning the flaps can reveal the head of a hummingbird, the torso of an ostrich, and the feet and tail of a penguin. . . Each flap also has a few sentences of information about the birds, and an opening chart with . . . size comparisons is particularly handy. A silly but still informative introduction to birds."— Booklist

From the Publisher

2020-09-01
A split-page format turns 10 birds into hundreds of avian chimeras in this mix-and-match portrait gallery.

As in her equally fetching Mix-a-Mutt (2018), Ball uses empty backgrounds to showcase invitingly big, bright, exactly detailed animals that somehow seem to be smiling up at viewers or down at fuzzy offspring even though they’re not anthropomorphized. The book is read by rotating it 90 degrees to the right; with the spine at the top, readers can then manipulate as many layers of the triple-split board pages as they want. Flipping heads, bodies, and hindquarters results in some odd combinations (“I’m a Snowy Owl—Ostrich—Bald Eagle bird”), but the subjects are placed, posed, and scaled so that aside from radical changes in color or type of plumage, even the most unlikely transitions at least match neatly. To Ball’s concept and illustrations Bucca adds bland but informative first-person commentary (“I make the largest tree nest in the world. It’s full of soft grass and feathers to keep my eaglets comfortable”); a helpful chart detailing each bird’s specific name, range, and diet appears on the front endpaper. The actual bird names alone are worthy of recitation: “salmon-crested cockatoo,” “resplendent quetzal,” “keel-billed toucan,” “marvelous spatuletail hummingbird."

Engaging flights of fancy and fact. (Novelty board book. 5-7)

Kirkus Reviews