Children love zoo animals from afar for most of their growing up years,though these relationships change as they grow. Toddlers and preschoolers marvel at their own power to approximate animal roars, grunts,calls, and movements. The early elementary school students, who have a natural desire to explore the world, are drawn into learning when wild animals beckon. Older elementary school students want to understanding with more depth what makes these beasts tick . More mature children, already embarked on an enduring path of passion for animals, seek out specific information.
First Encounters with the Wild Animal Species
Parents taking their first zoo expedition with a baby can prepare your baby, you can begin with Jan Pienkowski's primer, Zoo (Little Simon, $4.99). The brightly illustrated board book is filled with simple, stylized drawings of creatures like crocodile, monkey, and lion. Each page is filled with an image to inspire a safari of naming and sound making.
The younger set has a great tour guide in Zookeeper Sue (HBJ, $10.95; ages 1-4) by Chris Demarest. Sue leads children around her zoo with rhyming hints about animals who hide behind easy to open flaps. Responding to "Watch them swing from tree to tree. What funny creatures do you see?", fumbling finger lift the brown coconuts to reveal two happy monkeys. All the animals at Sue's zoo are smiling. They should be because she feeds them well and they're at home in their surroundings. Sue makes young children happy, too, as she provides introductory information about animals and how a zoo cares for them.
Toddlers Safari Into Animal Behaviors
Wild animals provide a way to release toddler wildness in Steve Lavis' Jump! (Lodestar, $14.99; ages 2-5). Bright illustrations follow a boy through active antics as he discovers it's fun to mimic the colorful animals he encounters. Refrains and simplicity encourage children to roar with the lion, jump with the tiger, and embark on other animal antic adventures.
There's more opportunity for action in Dawn Apperley's Animal Moves (Little Brown, $9.95; ages 1-3) . Zoo animals are great movement models as a kangaroo hops right out of the book, penguins waddle across a page, and the alligator snaps his huge three dimensional jaws. A few bold-printed exciting words, brilliant primary colors, and creative tab designs make this book an inspiration for parent-child involvement.
Animal qualities are the focus of Rod Campbell's Dear Zoo (Little Simon, $6.99; ages 2-5). A child writes the zoo and asks for a pet. The zoo sends a string of beasts that don't fit domestic life. Lift-the-flap crates arrive and if children can't guess the animal from outlines and clues, they can pry open shipping containers to learn animal identities. Each page ends with the refrain": "I sent him back" until the final page shows the arrival of the perfect pet.
Preschoolers Prowl into Learning with the Aid of Zoo Animals
Zoo animals can unlock the gates of early learning and many books have an interactive element because children participate easily when animals are involved. Richard Edwards' Amazing Animal Alphabet ,(Orchard, $14.95; ages 2-5), an alphabetic tour of animals from alligator to zebra succeeds with information and presentation. Word clue riddles and visual hints make guessing easy and learning fun, as do answers revealed by flaps. The illustrations are colorful and the range of animals, both known and unfamiliar, make this a book that can grow with children.
Lisa McCure also uses a lift-the-flap format in her Fuzzytail World (Random House, $5.99; ages 4-6). The animals in her book are all placed in their natural settings and McCure organizes them according to habitats from around the world. She also offers questions and information to begin early discussions about animals, their homes, and their young.
Ginger Wadsworth's One Tiger Growls (Charlesbridge, $6.95; ages 5-8) is another book that children can grow with. Toddlers will love the sound making, preschoolers can count James Needham's beautifully drawn animals, and there's information about habitat and habits that a young child will enjoy knowing.
Neal Layton employs early humor when he examines the wild kingdom from the viewpoint of aliens in Smile If You're A Human (Dial, $14.99; ages 4-9).When an alien tourist family visits a zoo to snap a picture "of a most unusual creature known as a 'human'." Mom holds the Alien's Guide to Earth and fields questions from her young son. Using this important alien resource, she identifies, refines definitions, and furthers her son's search. Neither kangaroo, tiger, penguin, giraffe, fit the bill, but finally the process of elimination leads to obtaining a successful photo....or so they think. In a last twist, we see them depart by space ship with a photo of a gorilla, and hear their last words about humans who "have the greatest smiles." This journey of strange perspectives will please young children who will enjoy knowing more than the aliens. Pictures are bright, bold, and illustrate the ironies.
Digging Deeper into Knowledge of Animals
As children get older, they want more specific information. Animals become a focus, rather than a vehicle for approaching learning.
New in paperback is Aliki's My Visit to the Zoo (HarperCollins, $6.95; ages 5-8). Children who are uncomfortable about zoo animals locked in cages will be as satisfied as the young girl in the story. She hates zoos until her cousin takes her to "a rambling park with trees and lakes" where animals "roamed free, as they would in the wild" creating " a walk through geography." With careful attention to detailing, Aliki leads a tour that describes plants, animals and their behaviors, habitats, and the inner workings of a zoo.
Lindsay Barrett George's Around the World: Who's Been Here? (Greenwillow, $16.00; ages 5-9) shepherds children around the wide world of animals with a guide and a guise. The guide is Miss Lewis. The guise is her habit of sending postcards home to her class during a nine month Circumnavigation-of-the-Globe trip. Author-illustrator George is an amazing observer and recorder of the natural world and also knows childrens' fondness for being actively involved in learning so she sets up a guessing game. From the first stop at the Panama Canal to last in California, Miss Lewis describes each locale in terms of the habitat and animals who live in the environment. Then she describes a clues left by an animal she does not name. Page turns reveal a magnificent, realistic spread which show the animal responsible for the evidence left behind. A pictorial index at the back of the book gives further information. Like a good teacher, George sets up scientific intrigue and promotes wondering in a way that makes children want to know.
Two Kids Can Press books lead explorations of the untamed animal world. In Pamela Hickman's Animal Senses: How Animals See, Hear, Taste, Smell and Feel (Kids Can Press, $6.95; ages 6-9). The author accurately explains how animals' senses differ from ours and each others'. Then she does something even better, she recommends simple experiments children can perform to experience the world as animals do. The section on animal sight, for example, gives children ways to see like a hawk, an insect, or even try out the swiveling binocular vision of a chameleon.
Etta Kaner examines Animal Defenses: How Animals Protect Themselves (Kids Can Press, $10.95; ages 7-9). Camouflage, impregnable habitats, copy catting, and playing tricks are all behaviors specific animals employ to elude capture. Their adaptations are fascinating and the author presents them in a way that will hook children. The hognose snake, for instance, acts like it is dead, even giving off a rotten smell as its tongue hangs out, and blood drips out of its open mouth. Common and more unusual animals are described in ways that will pique inquisitiveness and then satisfy that wondering with meaningful detailing.
Christine Denis-Huot's The Zebra ($6.95; ages)joins seventeen other titles in Charlesbridge's Animal Close-ups series There's lots of information about every facet of zebra life (fighting, danger, habitat, family, etc.) and the delivery of this knowledge is succinct, clear, and easy to read. But children may love this book best for the striking photographs that capture the animals in every aspect of their lives.
For Some, Love of Animals Lasts Forever
By the time children reach middle school, they are serious about animals and may already have extensive general knowledge. Books can give scientific specifics and individual views of adults passionate about the animal kingdom.
"Science is the search for understanding of our world," writes Jack Meyers, Ph.D., Senior Science Editor Highlights for Children, in his forward for On the Trail of the Komodo Dragon: and Other Explorations of Science in Action (Boyds Mills Press, $17.95; ages 9 and up). Meyers gives them opportunity to learn more with his approachable style, intriguing information, and introduction to the fascinating world of scientific inquiry. He cites and explains the work of scientists who teach language to chimps, measure a cheetah's speed, or develop a process to figure out how a giraffe pumps blood to the brain.
Houghton Mifflin's Scientists in the Field series publishes two new titles: Stephen Swinburne's Once a Wolf: How Wildlife Biologists Fought to Bring Back the Gray Wolf and Sy Montgomery's The Snake Scientist (both from Houghton Mifflin, $16.00, interested 9 and up). Both books have much to recommend them: stunning photographs, engaging writing by those fascinated by their subjects, and insights into the lives of scientists and environmentalists.
Some extend animal attachment to those of the more mythic variety. This year animals make an artistic appearance in An Elizabethan Bestiary: Retold (Horse & Buggy Press, $38.00; all ages). This book is an amazing collaboration by local artists and combines the talents of poet Jeffery Beam, botanical artist, Ippy Patterson, and finally, includes a few splendid photographic portraits of the performing Beam captured by M.J. Sharp . In this world of mass production, the first thing that impressed me was the individual hand-loved feel of the book; artistry shines on all levels of the partnership. Pen and ink drawings by Patterson are detailed with the kind of attention that must have sent the artist close to blindness. Beam, inspired by a medieval book about animals where the lines between real and imagined blurred, generated odes that bring the book into our world with a mix of classic and contemporary expression. Some poems celebrate the common cat, while others remark on the marvels of the sinewy Hydra, and still others may help you discover beast you never knew existed. The careful presentation of the book even extends into the Afterwards with notes that explain the book's history , meaning, and the artists' processes of creation.
You couldn't find a more devote example of someone with a lifelong love of animals than Joy Adamson who is the subject of Anne Neimark's new biography,Wild Heart (HBJ, $17.00; ages 11 and up). Born to privilege in Czechoslovakia, Joy's early life was full of struggle. Two world wars and the divorce of her parents were the backdrop in which the talented young musician and artist searched for her life's work. Early incidents related by the biographer clearly explain her strength, courage, and endurance. On the morning of an examination to receive her piano certification, Joy accidentally cut her thumb badly with a knife. Winding it tightly with a bandage, Joy proceeded, dreading the third difficult piece. When her bandage came unwound and blood covered the piano, the exam was halted and her persistence earned her certification.
This same determination leads Joy to fall in love with two men who introduce her to Africa and her enduring passion for preservation and appreciating animals of the wild. Joy is best known as the author of Born Free which documents her raising of Elsa, a lion cub born in the wild, and her evolving understanding of the depth of animal perception and the bond that built between their two species. Joy was also an avid conservationist and exquisite painter who captured African ceremonial garbs and elegant botanical findings with equal success. The book's end points to the irony of her death at the hands of human savagery, proving man is a far more dangerous and cruel animal than those she came to love.