Animal magic

Rod Campbell's classic Dear Zoo is celebrating its 25th anniversary this month. It remains a firm favourite in many nursery book corners, with new generations of children guessing what the perfect pet will be (for the uninitiated, it's not an elephant, snake or even a monkey, but a puppy!).

Dear Zoo is an ingeniously simple lift-the-flap book with uncomplicated pictures and gentle humour, such as the camel with his nose in the air, who was 'too grumpy', and the tall giraffe whose head sticks out of the packing crate. With more than a million copies having been sold worldwide since 1982, it's a book that children enjoy returning to repeatedly.

Surprise success

Author Rod Campbell, who now lives in Paris, has an unusual background. He was born in Scotland and grew up in Rhodesia before returning to Britain to attend university and research organic chemistry in Nottingham. He recalls, 'Art was seen as a pastime and not a serious thing to do, so I took up other work. But there came a point when I said it was not what I wanted to be doing. At 27 I gave it all up and moved to London to paint.

'It was just the beginning of novelties - little things that attracted children to books. In those days, lift-the- flap books were put behind glass cases in libraries and children couldn't touch them. We've come a long way from that.

'Dear Zoo was one of my first books and I was inspired when I wrote it. It all came in one piece, which is unusual. I thought that children like animals and then thought what they could hide behind. But I had no idea what a success it was going to be, and it did take some time to catch on.

When it was put into board book format, everyone then wanted to buy it.'

He attributes the lasting appeal of his books, which include Oh Dear!, I Won't Bite! and a series of stories about Buster, to their simple approach.

'Maybe I'm able to see things like small children do,' he muses. 'I quite often read a book and get to the end and think, so what? What happens next? I'm a great one for simplicity. There should be a sequence of pictures and the book should end on an 'up', with a happy feeling or a logical conclusion, because children understand that.'

What readers need

Sadly, Rod believes the quality of children's book publishing has declined in recent years. 'Publishers suddenly realised that there is a market in young children's books and they all wanted to get in on the act. There is now a sea of early years books,' he says. 'When I go into a bookshop - and I can never resist when I'm passing - there are so many children's books that I'm daunted. I always wonder what parents of small children must think. There are too many books and there are too many mediocre books.

Publishers now seem incapable of publishing books without a gimmick when it is not needed and not there for a sensible purpose. I despair.

'There also now seems to be a European style of artwork which is messy, like the drawings have been done by poster paint and there are no black outlines. I think we have lost our identity and everything is starting to look the same.'

The books that Rod does admire and that have influenced him include Eric Hill's Spot series and the work of Eric Carle, who wrote The Very Hungry Caterpillar. He says it is important for books aimed at pre-readers to have repetition, as in Dear Zoo, rhyme and a conclusion.

'Pre-readers pretend to read because they can pick up on the repetition and love saying it. This is an element to learning to read - they are linking sounds to the black marks on the page.'

'Rhyme is also important because children can anticipate and know what is coming next and they can say it. It is all about involving small children in the book.

'I also like books to be coherent. The pictures, story and words should all fit together.'

Above all, Rod Campbell creates books that please him, or rather please his 'inner child', which he says is perhaps more on the surface with him than other people. 'Many of my books have been selling for all these years, so I've obviously done something right'. NW