Dear Zoo

Dear Zoo by Rod Campbell was a book that Thomas absolutely adored from about the age of 4 months until he about 14 months.  It is a simple story of a kid who wants a pet and so he writes to the local zoo and they send him an elephant.  But the elephant is too big so he sends it back and then send him a lion.  But a lion os too fierce so he sends it back.  This keeps going through various animals such as a frog, a snake a camel and a monkey.  Eventually he gets the perfect pet and keeps it.

The thing that Thomas loved was that each gift that the zoo sent was behind a flap of cardboard that he had to open.  They opened in different ways; he had to pull one down, another up, and yet another had two flaps split in the middle.  He knew what was behind each one because he made the noise of the animal, but he was still chuffed to bits when he managed top open it.  So not only did he have a positive experience with a book, he also got to practise his motor skills and hand-eye coordination.

If you have to buy a present for a child you can do a lot worse than this one.  Be careful, though, as I have seen other editions that don’t have the same idea of opening the box to find the animals.