Dear Zoo - Rod Campbell

I remembered this book when I was at school so when I came across it on Amazon and had some outstanding credit I decided to get it for my daughter as she loves reading.

The book is written by Rod Campbell and published by the Penguin group, it was first published in 1982 so it has been around for a long time. Like I said I bought the book on amazon for around £3.50 for the paperback version, it is also available in a board book and also in a noisy book which has buttons to press to make animal noises.

The front cover of the book shows a bright red crate with slats open where you can see there is a Lion hidden inside, there is a label on the crate stating from the zoo, the title of the book and the author are written across the front cover in bold black writing so stand out well against the black background.

The book is about a boy or girl (you are not told which) who has written to the zoo and asked for an animal to be sent for a pet, throughout the book the zoo send various animals for pets but there is something wrong with them all until finally the zoo sends a dog. There is an Elephant that's too big, a Giraffe that's too tall, a Lion that's too fierce, a Camel that's too grumpy, a Snake that's too scary, a Frog that's too jumpy and a Monkey that's too naughty.

The pictures in this book are pretty simple and are in bold bright colours, the pictures don't have much detail to them but I think this is fine in a childrens book. On each page the animal that has been sent is hidden behind a bright crate and your child has to pull open the flaps to find out what the animal is, on some of the pages you can see part of the animal before the flap is moved and my daughter enjoys guessing the animal although we have now read it that many times that she knows which animal is behind which flap.

My daughter finds this book funny as when we get to the naughty Monkey page I tell her I have two naughty Monkeys. I was quite surprised when we read the book to find that my daughter didn't know what a camel was but I suppose it is not one of the main animals a child usually learns. The book has only a few words on each page which are written in quite large black letters and the wording is quite repetitive which is great for my daughters age who are beginning to learn to read. I loved this book as a child and so does my daughter now, my youngest will sit and listen to it although she is a little rough with the flaps and they do rip easily, I think the fact that this book has been around for nearly 30 years says it all.