A review by trish204
A Charm of Goldfinches and Other Wild Gatherings: Quirky Collective Nouns of the Animal Kingdom by Matt Sewell
4.0
I found out about this book thanks to a friend here and since I'm a linguist and love everything quirky about languages (palindromes, puns, etc), I also enjoy all the collective nouns of the animal kingdom. One of my personal favourites has always been "a murder of crows" though thanks to this book I now know that people have been very inventive with the names of other animal groupings as well. So of course I needed to have this book.
It is divided into the chapters "land", "air", and "water".
What I didn't expect but enjoyed very much was all the historical info about how the nouns came to be as well as some cultural context. Like in the example below:
The illustrations, too, of course. I got a taste of Matt Sewell's art in his other book I read yesterday and I really like his style. In this case it brought home the quirkiness of the labels we give animal groups and was the perfect combination.
It is divided into the chapters "land", "air", and "water".
What I didn't expect but enjoyed very much was all the historical info about how the nouns came to be as well as some cultural context. Like in the example below:
The illustrations, too, of course. I got a taste of Matt Sewell's art in his other book I read yesterday and I really like his style. In this case it brought home the quirkiness of the labels we give animal groups and was the perfect combination.