Not Yet, Zebra has a bouncy and fun feel to the text and has quirky, cartoonish, yet fairly realistic, illustrations. The little girl in the story has her story all set up to tell. But that pesky Zebra is not following the plan.
My take was one should not assume the animals the girl is trying to paint (in alphabetical order) are really “alive”, but I assumed that it is a child pretending her animals are alive and these animals can be mischievous. Especially that Zebra. However, it is a perfectly legitimate assumption to assume that they are real animals that have human emotion and desires. The tone is softer and less active than some stories with an impatient character. It is a story that happens to teach the alphabet while telling a story. This allows it to be read multiple times, unlike a traditional alphabet book.
Lou Kuenzler and Julia Woolf bring to life the alphabet in simple text and the illustrations are fun to “read” as well. They capture the impatient zebra to a Z and the antics can be laugh out loud due to the silliness. The colors are bright without being over powering.
I personally did not get the lessons of patience and manners that Zebra was supposedly supposed to learn (this is due to the slightly surprise ending). Yet, those messages are there as well. With that said, the fact it is an alphabet book makes it worth the read and the lessons are just gravy to the main theme.