I am Big, I am Small

By Author / Illustrator

Vicky Woodgate

Genre

Animals

Age range(s)

Publisher

Scholastic

ISBN

9780702338199

Format

Paperback / softback

Published

11-09-2025

Synopsis

Learn about incredible animal opposites in this bright and colourful picture book! Meet a GIANT squid, and a teeny tiny seahorse. Did you know that a cheetah can run faster than a sports car, but a slow loris's top speed is 1 mile per hour? Have you heard about the binturong bearcat who smells like hot buttery popcorn, a lot nicer than the anteater who sends out VERY stinky smells when they get scared!

This hilarious and colourful picture book will entertain readers as they learn incredible and lesser-known facts about animal opposites in the wild. PLUS, an extra spotting element throughout the book, to find the extra fast or slow, stinky or not, and all the other opposite animals hiding on each page.

Reviews

Lucy

I am Big, I am Small is all about opposites and uses animals to demonstrate each of these. For example, the first double page spread includes a ginormous octopus illustration with pictures of tiny seahorses. I like how it includes lots of other facts about each species as well as focussing on the fact that they are opposite in size.

The contrasting colours used in the images are eye catching and will draw children in. Younger children will be able to access the book by enjoying the illustrations and the key facts with the antonyms highlighted in bold, whereas slightly older children will be able to delve deeper into the meatier facts about each species as well.

Even though there is a lot of information packed into this book, the facts are presented in a very user-friendly way, with small snippets of information spread throughout the illustrations. The book includes animals from lots of different habitats including domestic pets like dogs and cats. Hopefully that means there will be more common animals children have heard of before as well as more unique animals they may be seeing for the first time.

My little boy loved the page about being friendly and grumpy. There's a large, pink dolphin looking happy as well as lots of very funky but very grumpy looking pufferfish. There's a double page spread at the back of the book where children have to play eye spy. They can go back through the book to locate each animal in the game and see which they can remember, or which they didn't spot the first time. This is a good way of developing comprehension skills for slightly older children as well as their visual memories.

32 pages / Reviewed by Lucy Hopkins, teacher