It’s an Orange Aardvark! by Michael Hall (review)

A group of five carpenter ants are stuck in a tree stump, convinced there is an anteating aardvark waiting for them just outside. The ant in the red hard hat (both the leader and the instigator of drama) decides to drill a hole through the wood and have a peek. Spying something orange, he then modifies his aardvark description to suit his findings (“Aardvarks turn orange when they are hungry for ants, you know”). As he drills more and more holes (actual die-cut openings in the pages) and spies more and more colors, his explanations grow wilder and wilder, eventually declaring in a state of outright panic, “It’s a pajama-wearing, ketchup-carrying, gecko-guiding, dozer-driving, orange aardvark pouring purple grape juice!” The more reasonable yellow-hat ant isn’t going for it; when he leaves the stump to explore, he instead discovers a brilliant rainbow arcing across the sky. The surprising final page finds the red-hat ant stuck in the stump with an actual orange aardvark drinking juice up top. Hall’s latest outing is entertaining both for its unusual cast of characters and its amusing yarn-spinning; the red-hat ant’s preposterous explanations are delightfully silly and perfectly suited to the audience. The digitally assembled illustrations (which incorporate acrylic painted textures and torn paper, according to a note) are strongly geometric, with large-scale shapes pieced together to form the characters and the setting, while softened textures and blurred pigments recall Eric Carle’s collage work. This could entertain a group, who will giggle at the commanding ant’s accumulating catalogue of frenzy in this clever tale.