Drake has an overwhelming love for animals. He draws them, pretends to be them, and most of all loves looking at books with them.  Ninety nine percent of his clothes are animal tops since he won’t wear anything else. I personally love that he is so into animals since I adore them myself, and was very much the same way as a child.  Now that Drake is getting a little older, I am trying to find books about animals that teach him more about them. He knows a lot of facts about them thanks to watching Diego, so I want to expand on that knowledge and help him learn more about all the amazing creatures we share our world with.

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My Big Animal Book – This is a good base starter book as it categorizes animals into different sections like farm, ocean, pets, etc.  It has many common animals as well as a few usual ones that Drake has learned. Drake has been looking at this one for a while so a lot of animal names are sight words for him, and he learned how to spell from this one too.

Move – This book shows how animals move around whether its hopping, swinging, running, or jumping.  It helps teach different ways of locomotion in animals as well as the differences in their bodies from one another and our own to aid in their mode of transportation.  Another one by the same author is What Do You Do With a Tail Like This which teaches about different tails and their purposes.

Zooborns– There are a lot of titles in the Zooborn series. Zooborns follows baby animals of all kinds born all over zoos in the world. I like it as it has a wider array of animals to introduce Drake to, as well as some interesting facts about the animal. I like to use it as a jumping off point to try to explain endangered animals and zoo efforts to help with conservation, education, and the plight of real animals in the wild. I hope if I can find an animal featured in them that we could visit in person, it might help make the connection even stronger. Drake is still young for these ideas now, but if his love and thirst for animal knowledge stays as he grows, I hope this will be a way for it to make more sense to him.

National Geographic Little Kids First Animal Book – I remember browsing through my parents’ National Geographics as a child, looking at all the animal pictures. I’m sure if I subscribed to the magazine, Drake would love it too. I like this book as a way to slowly introduce more facts and tidbits about animals.

Zoobooks – As a child I got Zoobooks and I loved them. Each month is dedicated to one animal and the entire magazine is dedicated to that animal. I remember learning all about the habitats, lifestyles, eating habits, raising of babies, etc. of all kinds of animals thanks to these magazines. It might be the reason why I love animals to this day.  I know Drake would love getting his own magazine in the mail filled with animals to learn about.

The Little Pig and others in the series – I read these books as a child myself.  There are different ones in the series but my favorite was the one about the little piglet and how he grew up on the farm and went on to win a blue ribbon at the fair.  These books will be wonderful to share as Drake gets older and listens to longer stories, and it’s a way of recapturing my own childhood memories with him.

I Love Ewe and Hug A Bull – These books teach you the names of mommy and daddy animals since many animals make a distinction between male and females.  Drake doesn’t know about this concept yet — all cows are cows to him — so I thought this would be good new knowledge for him.

Do you have any favorite animal books to recommend?