Dear Zoo is a book for very young children, written and illustrated by Rod Campbell. It's a durable card book around A5 size (but square) with a brightly coloured cover and simple drawings throughout.

The first page starts “I wrote to the zoo / to send me a pet. / They sent me an...”. Each left-hand page thereafter contains the text “So they sent me a...”, until the final page. On the opposite pages there's a picture of a crate / box / basket (each one is different), with lift-up flaps so your little one can see what's inside. The first animal is in a big crate marked “VERY HEAVY!”, and the text underneath it says “He was too big! I sent him back”. When you open up the crate, inside you find an elephant.

The book continues along the same lines, with each animal being too something – tall, fierce, grumpy, naughty, etc – until eventually, after thinking long and hard, the zoo decided to send a puppy – which was, of course, “perfect... I kept him”.

The book is pretty hard-wearing, the copy I have came to me second hand and was a little chewed on one side but otherwise it looks like it can stand up to quite some punishment. The flaps that open up to reveal the animals are reasonably sturdy as well, and generally they're easy enough for even a very young child (mine's not 18 months yet) to open without difficulty. My daughter loves opening up the flaps to see the animals, and likes having the book read to her with a suitably theatrical voice.

The RRP is £4.99 and admittedly I probably wouldn't have wanted to pay that amount for it, but there's really nothing negative about this book. I'm not sure what age range it's meant for exactly, but I would suspect that anything from ages 1-3 would enjoy it.


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Recommended: Yes