Dear Zoo By Rod Campbell

 

About Book

Title: Dear Zoo
Author & Illustrator: Rod Campbell
Genre: Fiction, Papered Engineered
Major Book Awards: No major book awards
Recommended Age Range: 3 to 6 
Appropriate Grade Levels: Pre-k to 1st grade

Summary

This story takes readers on an adventure of all the mostly seen animals in a zoo. It started off with an anonymous child writing a letter to the zoo asking them to send the perfect pet. The zoo then sends the kid an animal, but each time that an animal was sent out via a crate, it was either too big, too small, too tall, or too wild to be considered a pet. After a few unpleasant deliveries, the zoo finally sent out the perfect pet and this time it was a puppy! The child has then decided to keep the puppy.

Evaluation - Would I Incorporate this book in the classroom?

This was honestly a fun lift-the-flap book. I don't remember my last time reading one, so it was pretty fun having little interactions with the book. I would definitely use this book in my classroom especially for students in Pre-k to 1st grade. It's mostly about animals, so this is the perfect age to read about it. Since the animals are covered up in these crates, the only way to uncover them is to lift it. So, something that I would do during reading with the students is read the text first, which kind of gives them a hint of the animal under the flap and students would try to guess what it is. After some guessing, I will lift the flap revealing the animal to them, as well as making animal sounds. The flaps don't entirely cover the animals, so students can also try to look at the build and color of the animal to help them make a good guess. After this read aloud, students will discuss with a partner as to what animal they think make a perfect pet and did Hopefully after a few reads, students will learn about animals and its' traits.