Animal House

by Catherine Ledner (Photographer)

Welcome to Animal House , where occupancy is strictly limited to the furry, the feathered, the hoofed, and the clawed. In this tongue-in-cheek peek at critters great and small, photographer Catherine Ledner has brought the animals indoors to create a collection of magical and clever portraits unlike any you’ve ever seen before. Discover a series of brightly-colored rooms, lined with plush carpets and bold decorative wallpapers, each inhabited by a different creature. Here is the flirty flamingo posing her posterior quite purposely, the painfully shy armadillo who cannot even face the camera, the kindly cow mugging shamelessly for laughs, the turkey caught in the midst of his macho march, and dozens more. Die cuts featuring cutouts of keyholes, windows, and skylights provide teasing glimpses of what dwells behind the next door or curtain, and gatefolds reveal surprising neighbors--such as the sly fox sitting in wait on the other side of the unkowing hen's wall...

Ledner’s whimsical images are perfectly paired with a selection of sophisticated light verse, witticisms, and humorous poetry from the likes of Oliver Herford and Ogden "The Cow is of the bovine ilk, One end is moo, the other milk." What emerges is a marvelous fantasy world where the animals rule the roost and the turn of every page offers unexpected delights.

Genres: Art

96 pages, Hardcover

First published September 18, 2007

Reviews

[Lisa Anybookanytime · Rating 5 out of 5]

Have you ever wondered how a crocodile would look in your living room? Now you can find out! And it's not done with Photoshop.

Catherine Ledner has photographed animals from the domestic to those usually associated with farms and zoos against a vivid interior backdrop, and they are cleverly displayed throughout the book with fold out spreads and page cutouts: a mouse seen through a hole in the page; a zebra through stripey louvres.

Quotes from poems or famous wits accompany each one. It's a sweet book that's fun to look through, and have as a coffee table book or maybe even flick through with a young child.

Not only does it do what it says on the tin, it does so in an original and highly entertaining way.

[Jade · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read a few poems at a time to the smallest member of the household at bedtime, with no expectation that the child would be interested, but the child surprised me by requesting it several nights. We both loved the colourful photography and interesting presentation of text and die-cut shapes.