What's New at the Zoo?

Supported by supplementary activities both at the end and on a companion Web site, this visit to a zoo provides emergent readers with plenty of addition practice, as well as snippets of information about panda cubs, elephant calves, peachicks, and other familiar zoo animal babies. In carefully composed paintings, Waites poses groups of generic but easily distinguishable adults and offspring for viewers to add up. The exercise is printed in numerical form on each spread too, and though the sums increase from “2 + 1 = ?” to “12 + 8 = ?” they don’t go up in strict order, which should help discourage guessing. Educational purpose takes the front seat here, but rests lightly enough on the rhymed text and animal pictures to remain more a game than a chore. — John Peters 

K-Gr 1An attractive and instructive picture book. On each spread, a rich, full-bleed watercolor painting is accompanied by a rhyming stanza that encourages readers to add up the number of baby and adult zoo animals. The endearing scenes are framed in a bold pattern formed from a detail within the picture itself, to a very pleasing effect. A few zoological terms are deftly slipped into the text. Slade's rhymes are refreshingly successful; they do not succumb to the trap of contrived language, as so often happens with rhyming. An appended section features a composite of all the spreads, allowing kids to review the equations simultaneously; this is followed by further math exercises and an activity for matching facts to the animal babies highlighted in the book. This cheerful package of images and information delivers intellectual nourishment in the guise of a tasty treat for the eyes. It's a fun introduction to early math skills and basic animal facts."Alyson Low, Fayetteville Public Library, AR" Copyright 2009 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Educational purpose takes the front seat here, but rests lightly enough on the rhymed text and animal pictures to remain more a game than a chore. - Booklist