Changes

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.

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.