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Dear Zoo (Noisy Book) by Rod Campbell (view source)
Revision as of 12:04, 29 March 2018
, 12:04, 29 March 2018no edit summary
{{infoboxinfobox2
|title=Dear Zoo (Noisy Book)
|author=Rod Campbell
|borrow=Yes
|isbn=978-0230757653
|pages=24
|publisher=Macmillan Children's Books
|date=October 2011
|amazonukaznuk=<amazonuk>0230757650</amazonuk>|amazonusaznus=0230757650|cover=<amazonus>0230757650</amazonus>
|website=
|video=Kzl9IyeMWto
|summary=Lift-the-flaps and press the 8 interactive sound buttons to see what the zoo has sent: the perfect pet -- in the end! This amazing, interactive play-along edition of [[dear Dear Zoo by Rod CapmbellCampbell|Dear Zoo]] brings the classic story to noisy life: hear the lion roar and the monkey chatter!
}}
There is something slightly unsettling about the notion of a noisy book; the very idea that you can make a racket with something intended as a quiet pastime is a tiny bit of an oxymoron for me. But not, of course, for your average toddler (let's assume that we are disregarding the din they are able to make just by banging a fair sized hardback such as this, on the table!) And I've never met a child who did not like a book with interactive buttons and flaps – never.
So we are scoring highly already on two counts, and better still, ''Dear Zoo'' is by Rod Campbell, who has been doing his day job for about thirty years now and in releasing this latest version of his already supremely popular non-noisy version (obviously also entitled [[Dear Zoo by Rod Campbell|Dear Zoo]] ) he's just hit one out of the park.
Delightfully, ''Dear Zoo'' is a series of ''letters'' from a child who would very much like a pet. It is a very obliging local zoo indeed that willingly parcels up a giraffe (among many other creatures) and posts them off, irrespective of their suitability for your average British household. And so you see, this is where the flaps (what have the Zoo sent this time?) come in and also the point at which we locate the button for the corresponding animal picture with representative animal noise on the sound bar on the right hand side of the book.
At a read time of approximately 4 to 5 minutes (depending really on how long you spend at the back of the book, which provides really rather excellent exercises in memory that are cleverly disguised as games to play with the animal pictures and sounds), it would make a great bed-time read if it were not quite so stimulating. The sounds produce slightly more brain activity than the parent of a sleepy pre-schooler would prefer. But that's really the only downside I can think of and the only reason I have deducted half a star, because at almost every other hour of the day (I preclude 5am from that statement) it's splendid fun and not long enough to become boring.
For further reading, maybe a book with an accompanying CD would be fun, in which case please take a look at [[The Noisiest Night by Thomas Taylor]] or perhaps the joyfully interactive, but thankfully silent [[Bedtime (Slip-Andand-Slide Books) by Maureen Roffey]] which actually ''is'' a bedtime read but incorporates gentle interaction with your little one, without making him or her laugh riotously at the monkey button!
Lastly, we at Bookbag would like to extend our thanks to the kind people at Macmillan Children's Books for sending us this copy to review.
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