With all the different animals in the world, one person can't possibly see them all without the aid of zoos. My family has a fascination with animals, we take just about every opportunity we can to see new animals. Our library has a zoomobile that brings animals in, they just had a reptile expert in, we have gone to see a butterfly expert and butterfly gardens, and last year we saw a whole live program about birds of prey. So this year when we learned of a bus trip to the
we jumped on that. It's been on our bucket list ever since we read that it's in the
. Now being the book worm mom that I am, we checked out several zoo related books, both before we went and once we got back.
Reading books about the zoo before you go to the zoo (or apply that to any activity) can get the kids even more excited about going. Yes, I know they are already bouncing off the walls with excitment as it is so why get them more rilled up? You can narrow in their excitment, and since the best zoos are usually large and can't be seen all in one day you'll want to get them to tell you what animals they most want to see. You can also give them knowledge about zoos before you go.
Knowing that they had a favorite exibhit, you might take time to look up books for more information when you get back home.
I have a variety of books to share with you, fiction and non-fiction, and for babies on up to teens.
I've had these two board books since my kids were babies. You can start reading them to newborns. The great thing about both of these books is that they not only are good for babies, but will grow through the toddler years and can even be good for when they start reading on their own.
At the Zoo has all your favorite
Sesame Street charcters as babies. This book is one of four in a
set
, and we have all of them and have read them to the point of being very well worn. The text is large so it's easy to read and for kids to follow along as you point to the words. They only share three zoo animals, but keep in mind this is a book for babies and toddlers who have short attention spans. I love that this book ends with an open ended question. Doing this leaves room to have a conversation around the book and talk more about your child's favorite animal. Go further with asking why.
Zoo Babies is the book I personally love more of these two. It is still a board book for small kids, but it goes into more animals and details a bit more. Instead of the elephant from
At the Zoo telling of the big ears and long trunk,
Zoo Babies tells that it uses the trunk to eat with. Like most board books this one does only have two sentences per page and is very short to keep the child's attention and keep the book moving. I like that the illustrations indicate where you will find the animals a koala lives in a tree, the hippo in the mud, the toucan in the jungle. Speaking on the jungle, the first page spread is my favorite illustration in the whole book, it's colorful and detailed and draws the reader right in.
Zoo Dreams by Cor Hazelaar
For being published in 1997 I'm a bit surprised in the lack of brighter colors in this book. That is the first thing both my daughter and I noticed is that the illustrations are muted. My five year old asked, "Mom what happened to the colors?" The illustrations also are disappointing with very little detail. I'm hoping that I can find on Amazon an updated version of this book because aside from the illustrations the book is great. I love the actual story. Looking at this from a more objective point of view, maybe everything is muted and not full of detail is because it is a bed time book. Looking at it that way I can see why Cor Hazelaar did the illustrations in this fashion. Just personally I would have liked to have a bit more, more detail, more color.
Now what I love about
Zoo Dreams is how we are walked through the zoo at night checking in on each animals to see how they are sleeping. I like that you learn the different sleeping habits of the animals, and then it ends with the zookeeper going to sleep. It makes a great bedtime book. "See how they are all sleeping? Show me how you sleep and they in the morning you can tell me which animals you dreamed about."
From bedtime to party time!
Birthday Zoo by Deborah Lee Rose
Illustrated by Lynn Munsinger
This book is all about the party, and rhyming. I found it interesting how much Deborah Lee Rose found to rhyme with so many animal names. She jammed 23 different animals into this book while holding a conversation about a birthday party. That's creative! What makes it even better is that many of the animals were ones that aren't commonly heard of like an okapi, tamarin, and gnu. These were each some of the animals we had conversations about in my house. Well what is a tamarin? Which animals on the page do you think it is? Then you can go further and look up each animal for more information on them.
Lynn Munsinger did a great job to make the illustrations the life of the party. They are colorful, detailed, and made you laugh. It was fun finding each different animal named on the page in the illustrations and was the way we figured out what the gnu was, before turning to google to make sure we were right in our guess.
The illustration on the last page is what really tops off the whole book, you find out that the whole party was really stuffed animals that this little boy was playing with. My children love their stuffed animals and they have a ton of them! So they can have their own zoo party, taking the book lesson and applying it to their own world. They can tell you what their own stuffed animals would do at a party and come up with rhymes for the toys they have. Encourage your kids to be creative and use their imagination.
Keeping with the fun upbeat pace, the last fictional book I want to share with you is...
Never Play Music Right Next to the Zoo
Written by John Lithgow
Illustrated by Leeza Hernandez
We were introduced to this book at a recent signing story time and I fell in love with it. The book comes with a CD so your child can listen to the book read and sung by the author with orchestra music in the background. We loved the book on our own, but the CD is a bonus, John Lithgow has such flair and emotion in his reading and makes the book spring to life.
Another reason we love this book is not only does it list many zoo animals, it's full of great vocabulary and many instruments that are in a orchestra. This is one book you can read for many different reasons and get something new out of it each time. You can use it for music lessons, to go over verbs, and adjectives, and sentence structure.
While the illustrations are good, they are colorful and entertaining, I find that I like the way the words lay on the page. It's fun to read the flowing of words and the bold names of the animals and instruments.
Going back to
Birthday Zoo, a
tamarin is a type of monkey. While we were at the zoo we saw a lot of different monkeys from Lemurs in Madagascar, to Gorillas in the Congo and when we got back we found a non-fiction book about monkeys to continue learning about them. While most zoos do have plaques that have information about each exhibit on them with two kids eager to see as much as possible in our short amount of time we had we didn't get to read a whole lot while we were there, so getting a book after was a great way to keep their interest and expand that experience.
The Wild World of Animals MONKEYS by Mary Hoff
The eye catching photographs that fill the whole page draw you in. They are without a doubt the sole focus of the book and I believe since they are so colorful and large it's the main reason my five year old sat and listened to the book in one sitting cover to cover. I picked this book out with my nine year old in mind and she did look through the book and read tidbits of info on the pages she liked the most. So when my youngest picked this book for bedtime one night I was very surprised to when she didn't lose interest after the first couple pages.
Mary Hoff tells about predators of monkeys and spends most of the book telling about squirrel monkeys. We learned a lot about squirrel monkeys, about their body, what they eat, how they live, it was a very informative book. I do wish with the title of
Monkeys that she had gone into more of the variety of monkeys that exist but we still enjoyed this book.
If you have a child interested in monkeys, especially squirrel monkeys I suggest check out this book.
Another favorite exhibit of the zoo was the reptile house, and my oldest loved the snakes and poison dart frogs. Since she loves snakes so much that will one day be it's own blog post, but the poison dart frogs with all their colors were beautiful and interesting to look at so again I found a non fiction book to share with her on this subject.
Poison Dart Frogs by Jennifer Owings Dewey
 |
| Poison Dart Frog we saw at Bronx Zoo |
This is a more advanced, in depth book than
Monkeys. The paragraphs are longer, and there are some parts that you might not want for younger children depending on how sensitive they are. The book covers a substantial amount of information dealing with these unique frogs, from their habitat, to mating and raising their young. For an empathetic child the hard part is where they talk about how humans collect poison from the frogs. The one method was fine, the frog hops happily away into the woods once again, on the other page they torture and kill the frog, and while I'm from a family of hunters, if you're not eating the animal, and on top of it to cause them pain it sits wrong with me and I really felt bad for the frog. So if you read this bear that in mind. I think it's important to have information and be able to say this method is wrong.
I enjoyed Jennifer's illustrations in this book. They were colorful, detailed, and I liked that you saw the line work and could tell it was done with colored pencils.
If you have a child interested in these frogs, the book is full of information.
The last two non-fiction books I want to share with you are for older reader. My children did look at the photos and read small captions, but whole book wasn't for them at their reading levels (yet) but they are interesting books that I think others will enjoy. The both deal with being a vet for a zoo which is rather cool and if you have a child obsessed with animals then this might be in their dreams of jobs they might one day have.
The Work of the Zoo Doctors at the San Diego Zoo 
by Georgeanne Irvine
You might notice that the photos in this seem a bit dated, the book was published in 1991 so it is older and our photography technology has improved but I don't think this deters from how fascinating their work as vets at this zoo is.
The
San Diego Zoo is another large zoo that makes it on the
top ten list. With the shear size of the zoo it's not surprising that they have their own veterinarian staff or that they have some interesting stories to fill a book. Georgeanne describes what they do as doctors at the zoo and cases they have and how they are helping animals.
My next book pick ties nicely in with the
Zoo Doctors as it explains how vets at the zoo need math skills. This book title caught my attention because of how people will say "When will I ever need algebra is real life?" Well this book tells you how you're going to use all sorts of math.
Mathworks! Using Math to be a Zoo Vet by Wendy and David Clemson and Ghislaine Sayers
This book is more recent having first been published in 2004 and then again in 2005 the photos are brighter. I was surprised by how much math goes into everything dealing with all of the animals. The three authors have done a great job giving examples of how math is used, with stories of the reader stepping into the role of a vet on call and having to figure out what to do. For example Twizzler is a giraffe who's zoo has been flooded and the reader has to find a way to transport her to a new zoo hundreds of miles away, sedate her, figure out the best route, and feed her. There are animal care facts, case notes, and a math challenge on each page. In the back of the book there are helpful math tips, the answer page, and a glossary.
I think it's a fun way to challenge your mind and think of math uses in other ways that might interest the child reading it more.
I hope you have a great week and get out to read and visit a wildlife sanctuary or zoo near you.
and Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?
, and we have all of them and have read them to the point of being very well worn. The text is large so it's easy to read and for kids to follow along as you point to the words. They only share three zoo animals, but keep in mind this is a book for babies and toddlers who have short attention spans. I love that this book ends with an open ended question. Doing this leaves room to have a conversation around the book and talk more about your child's favorite animal. Go further with asking why.
by Georgeanne Irvine
