Edwards, Wallace. Monkey Business. Toronto, ON: Kids Can Press, 2004.
This book reminds me of The King Who Rained, a book of visual/linguistic puns which was a family favourite when I was growing up. Though not structurally a narrative, this book manages to make little self-contained animal-focused stories out of figures of speech ("monkey business" or "letting the cat out of the bag") through detailed and sophisticated watercolour, gouache and pencil crayon illustrations. Not only do the the illustrations transform common idioms into literal pictures, they also add additional visual puns in relation to the original text which add to the layers of linguistic and visual complexity in what might appear (considering the breifness of the text) to be quite a simple book. The illustrations are so complex that when I arrived at the last page that asked if I had found the monkey on every page, I hadn't noticed even one after the original "monkey business" spread. And they weren't easy to find even when I was looking.
Great not only for reading aloud to younger children for the delight of the illustrations, it could be a great tool for discussing idiomatic language with older students or those learning English as a second (or additional) language.
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