Let me share one of my favourite toddler picture books! October’s Book Club pick can be found across bookshelves in libraries, nurseries, homes and speech therapy clinics. Here you’ll find why we love this picture book as well as speech and language goals and other toddler picture books to include on your bookshelf.
Picture Book Review
A young narrator writes to a zoo to ask for a pet. The zoo sends a range of animals like an elephant and lion but do these animals make the perfect pet?
Picture books about animals are fantastic to include in your storytime routine. Animal sounds and talking about animals can be a lot of fun. It can keep the interaction going. I wonder if you can say all the animal sounds in Dear Zoo!
Related Post: How to Choose Great Toddler Picture Books
4 Reasons Why We Love This Picture Book
1 – It’s Interactive
Each animal is hidden under a differently shaped crate. Lift the flap and see which animal the zoo sent. Is it a tiger? A crocodile? A snake?
Lifting the flaps in toddler picture books creates surprise, excitement and wonder. Similar to hide-and-seek, this element helps draw in your child’s attention, learn about the concepts “open” and “close”, and begin to make simple predictions of what animals the zoo might send next.
2 – It’s Repetitive
It may seem tedious repeating the same phrases or picture book over and over again but for our little ones the repetition helps create predictability and familiarity. This helps with knowing what to expect as well as consolidating their understanding and learning of new words, concepts and the story. Repetition helps build confidence as the new skills becomes effortless.
3 – Picture Books about Animals
The illustrations in Dear Zoo are set on a white background and are simple yet clear. While the written text doesn’t name the animals, you can label them when you’ve opened the crate. You can describe the animals you see (e.g., “the elephant has a trunk” “the dog has 4 legs”) or you can add the animal sounds (“roar”, “hiss”, “woof”) and fun words, like “wow” “oh” “oh no”. Using these fun sounds and words can help catch your child’s attention. Your little one may be more likely to copy them because they’re often ‘easier’ to say. Picture books about animals also create an opportunity for a fun interaction with you.
4 – You Can Add Movement
For some children, sitting during book time might be their preference but for other children movements whether big or small help their attention, engagement, learning and regulation. Picture books about animals are great for bringing the book to life by incorporating big movements like animal walks. How does an elephant walk? Let’s walk like giraffes?
Not only does it open up an opportunity for wriggling, jumping, or walking on your tip-toes, it also creates a space where you can model those action and describing words (“tall like a giraffe” “jumpy like the frog” “slither like the snake”).
Themes and Interests
- – Zoo animals / wild animals
Speech and Language Goals
Explore some speech and language goals that you can embed into your story time with your toddler at home. Meet your child on their level and focus on modelling 1-2 goals at a time.
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Vocabulary and Concepts
This picture books for animals is great for helping your toddler’s speech and language development. You can name and talk about:
- – Early describing words: big, tall, fierce, grumpy, scary, naughty, jumpy, perfect
- – Action words: wrote, sent, thought, kept, open, close, turn
- – Category: Animals – elephant, giraffe, lion, camel, snake, monkey, frog
Fun Sounds and Words
- – Fun words: wow, oh no, urgh, knock-knock
- – Animal sounds: roar, brrrhh, ribbit, oo-oo-aa-aa, hiss, humph
- Speech Therapy Activity Ideas:
Grammar Structures
- – Irregular past tense: wrote, sent, thought, kept
- – Early conjunctions: so, and, but
- – Pronouns: I, they, him
Higher Level Language Skills
‘Dear Zoo’ is one of those picture books about animals that creates opportunities for you to model language around labelling, describing, and predicting. For example, you can model:
- Labelling
- – Elephant
- – Snake
- – Monkey
- Describing
- – Body parts: 4 legs, trunk, tail
- – Size: big, small, long, short
- – Function: eats bananas
- – Feelings: grumpy
- Predicting and Sequencing
- – Maybe they’ll send a crocodile
- – They sent an elephant then a giraffe
Gestalt Language Learning
If your child is a gestalt language processor (i.e., learns language in chunks or scripts), use the illustrations in the picture books about animals to make comments and model mitigable gestalts naturally.
Here are some examples of mitigable gestalts that you could include in your story time. They are not a ‘one size fits all’ as gestalts should be chosen based on your child’s interests and what is meaningful for them.
Speech Sounds
Picture books about animals are a great way to include listening and tuning into specific speech sounds. During story time, there is no pressure for your toddler to say the target words if they don’t want to. It’s a time for your toddler to focus their attention on the chosen speech sounds.
Here are some speech sounds and word structures you could emphasise and focus on.
- – p: pet, jumpy
- – b: big, back
- – t: tall, too, sent
- – m: mmm, me, camel, him
- – f: fierce, perfect, elephant, giraffe
- – s: sss (snake sound), sent, so, fierce
- – z: zoo, was
- – k: kept, camel, monkey, back, snake
- Word structure –
- – CV: me, too, so, zoo
- – CVC: tall, big, back, pet, was
- – 2 syllables: camel, monkey, perfect
- – multi-syllable: elephant
Early Literacy Awareness
Learning to read starts with developing an awareness of the book and print conventions. This includes understanding that the:
- – cover is the start
- – back is the end of the story
- – spine holds the book together
- – squiggles hold meaning as they are the text
- – text is read left to right (in English)
Book details: Published by Macmillan’s Children’s Books
ISBN: 13: 978-0-230-74772-2
Other Picture Books about Animals
Here are some other picture books about animals that they may enjoy:
- – Zoo Sounds by Sam Taplin
- – Who’s at the Zoo? by Julia Donaldson
- – Busy Zoo by Ruth Redford
- – The Lion Inside by Rachel Bright
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