Two new board books from Ripley's Believe It or Not

Believe it or not--Ripley's has branched out into boardbooks with Wacky 123 and Oddphabet!   And the books are as odd and quirky as one might expect.

Wacky 123 takes a fairly standard counting format and oddifies it, pairing a picture of an unusual animal, or animals, and a picture of items to count.  So alongside the picture of a narwhal, for one, is
a picture of its single tooth, a two-headed cow has two hats, three little pigs in a teacup sport three bowties, and so on.  It's quirkiness made me chuckle.

Oddphabet goes through all the letters with four lines of (sometimes somewhat forced) descriptive rhyme accompanying a bevy of interesting animals.  It's fun to see critters like blobfish and umbrella bird, and there are quite a few eyebrow-raising oddities, like a two-headed viper and a turtle with hair on its head. 

The bright pictures are easy on the eye, though nothing extraordinary; their cheerful colors go just fine with the words.

I didn't personally find them particularly outstanding, mostly because some of the oddities seemed somewhat random and not based on real life peculiarities, like a hippo seated at a table eating cupcakes (as opposed to rabbits engaged in competitive rabbit jumping, and an elephant painting, which have a basis in reality).   That being said, these are fun novelty picks for grown-ups who appreciate quirkiness,  who want to liven up their educational boardbook selections.   Little kids might be bemused, but since much is probably bemusing to them in any event, why not.

disclaimer: review copies received from the publisher