An Ambush of Tigers

Just little rhymes about the different collective nouns for different kinds of animals, like “A murder of crows.”

I wanted to hate this book, I really did. But I can't fault it for being well-written poetry with good rhymes, or for having great illustrations. And it certainly doesn't have a bad message. In fact, I don't think there's really a message at all in this book. It's pretty and it's well written. It's a fun book.

I just hate collective nouns. I don't think those words are useful. I have no problem with teaching them to kids. I just don't understand the prescriptivist attitude that we should use those words rather than other words that we have. I think those words were just made up by people in some bygone era just hanging out and going, “Hey, wouldn't it be cool if we called a group of animals this?” And now we have to learn them, or people will make fun of us.