Yaks Yak Animal Word Pairs, written by Linda Sue Park, reviewed by Klaudia Janek

Student Reviewer: Hayden S.
Summary: Yaks Yak is a fiction book picture book that shows real concepts in a fictional manner. The book shows a variety of animals on each page doing a variety of different actions. The animals show a lot of devices used in literature and can reflect it upon a younger reader. While also showing devices the animals are portraying the scenes that the author is portraying with their phrases.

Straight Talk for Librarians: Linda Sue Park’s book, Yaks Yak Animal Word Pairs, illustrated by Jennifer Reinhardt is very inventive and creative and I would consider it almost “one of a kind. ”The book might be a bit confusing for a younger audience at first but through progression, the reader may start to understand that idea of this book. One example that would click with everyone is "Bats Bat" or "Bugs bug Bugs." With the clues provided on each page, a younger reader might be able to understand what each page is telling you. Young readers can also connect with common animals doing human activities showing the personification and irony of these animals. The book shows a system of simple but few words along with the beautiful illustrations that can help children get a full understanding of what exactly the author is attempting to portray. The book using illustrations and very brief phrases combines irony with homographs to make a comically fun book to read while also being very informative to an elementary level of language arts to expose young readers to these literary devices and how they can be used outside of the box. Readers might recognize what seems to be textboxes or objects disguised as text boxes that help to portray the scene the author is trying to make. The author and the illustrator did fantastic work by allowing the scenes to flow with what the author was envisioning with their book. The sheer amount of literary devices that can be uncovered in a little under than 40 pages is incredible. I recommend this to any English/Language Arts class that wishes to help portray literary devices in inventive ways.