A Little Book of Sloth

Cooke, whose YouTube videos and 2011 Animal Planet documentary, Too Cute! Baby Sloths, set off a minor sloth-loving craze, offers an encyclopedic look at these permanently smiling, adorably snub-nosed “masters of mellow” by way of a photo-tour of their now famous sanctuary in Costa Rica. There are sloths in pajamas (which are actually necessary because they can’t control their body temperature), sloths in a “cuddle puddle,” sloths hugging stuffed animals, sloths gazing into the camera with small but trusting eyes (even when they’re upside down)—all proof that life in the fast lane is vastly overrated (it probably helps that these sloths aren’t covered in algae and insects, as they are in the wild). An Oxford-trained zoologist, photographer, and documentarian, Cooke writes with a firm sense of authority and a loving irreverence (“Since their top speed is fifteen feet a minute, running from danger is simply not an option”; “Baby sloths are Jedi masters of the hug”) that lifts these pages far above most real-life animal books and should make the inevitable umpteenth readaloud easy to bear. Ages 5–up. (Mar.)■