Genius Noses: A Curious Animal Compendium - Lena Anlauf - ★★★.½

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AUTHOR: Lena Anlauf
ILLUSTRATOR: Vitali Konstantinov
GENRE: Children's Nonfiction, Animals.
RATING: 3.5 stars.

In a Nutshell: A good compilation of facts connected to animals with “genius noses.” Liked the content, not so much the presentation.


As the title clearly indicates, this is a book about animal noses. And not the ordinary ones but the whimsical ones that have rightly been tagged as ‘genius’ in the name. While such books are usually my cup of tea, this book was a bit of a mixed bag.

The content is outstanding, no doubt about that. The animals range from the popular ‘elephant’ to the I-knew-a-little-about-this-fellow ‘star-nosed mole’ to the I-never-knew-such-an-animal-existed ‘desman’. The range of animals was a treat!

Most pages focus on a single animal, with the left hand side having a large illustration along with the animals’ common name and zoological name, and the right-hand-side having some smaller illustrations and multiple text boxes replete with informative tidbits that blow your mind at times. Instead of being merely educational, the trivia also includes some fun facts about the animals or their habitats or other such related information.

There is a glossary at the end explaining the biological and zoological terms. I loved the inclusion of binomial nomenclature in this list. As the scientific names of the animals are mentioned in the main content, it is nice for kids to understand how the naming process actually works. (Then again, just a few days ago, a newly-discovered snake species was named after Harrison Ford, who already has an ant and a spider species sharing his name. So I too am not sure if there is a scientific logic to zoological names! 😂)

Here’s where the book could have worked better for me:
- There is too much text on the page. Younger kids might be overwhelmed with the cluttered information.

- The font style and its tiny size didn’t help matters. I also couldn’t figure out why the text was green in colour – leaf green is so difficult to read, all the more when placed against light green or yellow or orange backgrounds!

- I prefer actual photos of the animals to illustrations alone in books containing factual details. No matter how well the sketches are created, they still don’t match the impact of photos, and for content where the focus is primarily on physical features, photos would have functioned far better. The current graphic style didn’t represent all the animals accurately, nor did it do justice to all the genius noses. The cartoonish look spoiled the impact of the animal trivia.


All in all, excellent information, but the presentation didn’t work that well for me. I think the physical copy of the book will be easier on the eyes in terms of colour as well as layout, so it will still be a good option for classrooms. The official target age for this book is 6-12 years.

My thanks to North South Books Inc. and NetGalley for the DRC of “Genius Noses: A Curious Animal Compendium”. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.

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