A Little Book of Sloth

Gr 3–5—Cooke's chatty, colloquial appreciation focuses on baby sloths in a Costa Rican sanctuary. The rescued infants and a few older companions were introduced in a documentary film, Too Cute! Baby Sloths, made by Cooke for TV's Animal Planet. Appealing color photographs of these winsome babies will surely captivate animal lovers. Bits of information on physical characteristics, behavior, and life in the sanctuary thread through an admiring discussion, emphasizing the smiling faces, hugging propensities, and sleepy lifestyle of the sloths. The science information is sketchy and often in terms likely to be most meaningful to adult readers. "The Bradypus, or three fingered sloth, is the Muppet with the medieval haircut and Mona Lisa smile." The fingers appear to be claws, and no further explanation of their structure and use is provided. Though the text mentions ways the baby sloths are actually trained to carry out some bodily functions as they would occur in the wild, there's no mention of these animals ever being released from the sanctuary except in a brief endnote on respecting sloths as wild animals not to be made into pets. This message runs a bit counter to the gushiness of the text and the many scenes of humans cuddling them. Though explanations and information about both the sloths and the sanctuary are rather skimpy, this is an attractive introduction to an unfamiliar species.—Margaret Bush, Simmons College, Boston