The Community creates brutal kids’ book for Peta featuring the screams of animals

Advertising agency The Community and illustrator Cristian Turdera have created a children’s book for animal activists Peta that outlines the horrific things done to creatures in labs, farms and at circuses.

Styled like your average kids’ book with cutesy illustrations, The Secret Lives of Animals tells the tale of a white bunny skinned for a coat, pigs off to the abattoir, mice planning their escape from a medical lab and a dolphin who is forced to perform in an aquarium. The book also features a soundboard at its edge, with buttons that trigger audio of animals seemingly in pain, recorded by Peta activists at industrial farms and aquariums.

“Animal sounds are one of the first things we learned in life,” The Community creative director Rodri González tells It’s Nice That. “Some of us have kids and now that is time for them to read an animal sounds book, we realised they are all wrong. Today, a world where pigs run free going ‘oink oink’ and cows go ‘moo’ on the farm is simply fiction.”

Released as part of Peta’s Christmas catalogue alongside a promotional film, The Secret Lives of Animals has been described by Peta as a “children’s book for adults,” suggesting they don’t actually intend you to give it to the little ones in your life.

González says, “We thought that to start putting an end to animal cruelty we need to tell the true story of how animals really live and sound nowadays. In a way, we believe that it’s important that parents face the world that they are leaving for their kids.”