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Zoopa: An Animal Alphabet

Gianna Marino

Picture Book

Ages 3 to 5

Chronicle Books, 2005, 0-8118-4789-6

  Imagine that you are sitting at a table with a bowl of soup in front of you. It is alphabet soup, and as you look down you see that pasta letters keep drifting past in the soup. There is an A. A is for….and you come up with the name of an animal. Ant. A is for Ant. What kind of animal is B for?

  In this wonderfully clever and unique mostly wordless picture book young children get to see a colorful collection of animals. On each double page spread two or three new letters are added to the bowl of alphabet soup that sits in the middle of the page. And two or three animals arrive on the scene whose names begin with those floating letters. Thus on the third double page spread we see that the letters E and F have joined the A, B, C, and D that are already floating in the soup. And a parade of elephants and a frog have joined the ant, the butterfly, the chipmunk, and the dogs. What makes this book especially enjoyable is that as letters and animals are added to the pages, the animals already on the page interact and act up. By the time you get to the I and J page the chipmunk is trying to catch the butterfly, the dogs are playing with each other, the frog is eyeing the ant with interest, and the hedgehog is swimming in the soup. What new and delightful nonsense is going to turn up next?

  With wonderful illustrations and an obvious appreciation for the ridiculous, Gianna Marino has created an alphabet book that children will come back to again and again. As they follow the antics of the animals, they will also be learning their alphabet, not to mention becoming familiar with all kinds of creatures. The finale will being a smile to faces, and at the back of the book the author includes four pages that will help children identify what the animals are. Just in case they are not sure what the V is for, they can turn to these pages to see that V is for vulture.

 

 

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