Spot a Lot Animal Escape by Steve Smallman and Nicola Slater is a fun animal themed book for young children, which teaches numbers, colours and helps children work on spotting things in crowded pictures.
Mr T (4) and Mr R (3) love this book. There is so much to explore within it. I know I would have loved this book as a child too.
The story starts off with a picture of all the empty enclosures at the zoo, and then you follow each page tracking down each type of animal, counting them as you go. The text includes rhyme and many of the pages are colour themed like this zebra page:
As you can see, there is lots of black and white to spot alongside the zebras hiding in this picture.
There is so much detail in each of the pictures that it keeps Mr T and Mr R occupied for quite some time, and it gives you lots to talk about with your child as you read the book together. It takes us quite a while to finish the book since they love to pause on each page and carefully count each animal, and make comments about some of the other animals and what each one is doing!
The pictures all have a very appealing sense of fun. Mr R loves the swimming pool page with “8 penguins keeping cool” there are so many little fun details to spot.
At the end of the book, all of the animals are returned to their places in the zoo, apart from the sneaky tortoise who has escaped! The pictures of the zoo enclosures are quite map-like and Mr T loved these since he has an interest in maps these days.
The text itself is quite simple, so fine to read to a young toddler with a shorter concentration span or good for an early reader to read aloud. Spot a Lot Animal Escape is a book that spans the age groups really well, since even a baby can enjoy listening to the rhyming text, and then older preschoolers will love looking at the detailed pictures to pick out each animal.
Spot a Lot Animal Escape is published by Parragon and available for only 2.99. See here for more details.
Anna Marikar, mum of four and seasoned blogger, has spent over a decade sharing her parenting journey and passion for kid-friendly crafts and free printables.
Her easy-to-follow craft ideas and practical parenting advice have transformed In The Playroom into a cherished resource for parents.
We really enjoyed this book too.
We really enjoyed this book too.
I love the pictures, they remind me of Richard Scarry’s illustrations 🙂
I love books that are more illustration based sometimes, gives you a chance to make up more stories for yourselves!! thanks for linking up with #readwithme x