Axolotls: Day to ZZZ

Stephanie Campisi is an Australian picture book author based in Tennessee. When not exploring the woods and streams about her home, she’s reading to her son or concocting imaginative worlds brimming with wordplay and whimsy.

Campisi creatively takes readers through the everyday routines of personified axolotls, from getting up through visiting several places number of places and winding down at night to, finally, going to bed. With each turn of the page, Campisi presents a different activity as well as two to four axolotls with names spun from taking English words that end in -g, -k, -gz, or -ks sounds and adding “olotl” to the end. For example, among the creatures getting dressed, we have Soxolotl, who wears a lot of socks; among the doers of morning chores, we meet Eggsolotl. A soothing abcb rhyme also accompanies each part of the day. Covelli’s brightly colored illustrations add another level of fun for young readers, while the axolotl’s names and other text are colored to contrast sufficiently against the mid-ocean background for easy reading. Readers will not learn much about axolotls, but those who like words and the cuteness of axolotls will enjoy this book.—Heidi Quist, Children's Literature