Cover Image: My Zoo

My Zoo

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Member Reviews

I adore this book. My Zoo illustrates different feelings as animals all part of the same zoo. It’s a wonderful visualization for young children to better conceptualize what they feel. Young children have big feelings that can seemingly take over. The detail in the illustrations show both whimsy and distinction for each emotion.

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I received an arc of this title from NetGalley for an honest review. A book about emotions using animals from the zoo as examples.

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I loved this book. A great intro to help kids identify feelings. Identifying them as animals was a brilliant idea and helped my daughter be able to associate how she was feeling with how an animal acts.

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It can be difficult to voice big feelings for children. This book is a great resource on identifying those feelings with the animals you find at the zoo. You and your child will connect to these feelings and the animals. It is a fun way when emotions are low to know how to handle those feelings.

A special thank you to Magination Press and Netgalley for the ARC and the opportunity to post an honest review.

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I LOVE this and can't wait to read it in class! In simple verse, feelings are compared to various animals, from the calm sloth to the angry lion. Each feeling is presented neutrally and respectfully and they're all acknowledged as equally valid. The book advocates for identifying emotions and feeling them as they come, which is a wonderfully healthy approach. This will be so relatable for young kids and will help give them ways to visualize feelings and a vocabulary to express them.

This will make a fantastic circle-time read for pre-K and early elementary and would be an awesome book to have on hand at home to help kids name and process their emotions.

Many thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review!

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Great book to help students understand their feelings. Kids love animals and will love the adorably funny illustrations on each page. This book connects human emotions to animal behaviors. Kids will love connecting with the adorable animals in this book. This book also provided rhymes to catch the readers attention. Awesome opportunities for new vocabulary words to be learned and taught. Great book to add to any library and use to teach about the emotions we all feel.

Thank you American Psychological Association and NetGalley for providing a digital copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

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This was a sweet and fun book with beautiful illustrations. This book talks about "the zoo inside us" - all of the different emotions we may feel each day. Each emotion was compared to an animal in the zoo, and can help children separate difficult emotions and identify how they feel. This can help children have a way to explain how they're feeling that they might not have had before! Ronan is only 3.5, but he was able to understand this book. This is one I definitely recommend!

Emotions discussed in this book: angry, calm, jealous, proud, embarrassed, brave, scared, excited, annoyed, sad, happy

Age level: 4-8
Pages: 32

"We all have zoos inside us, and what we feel's okay."

Thank you American Psychological Association for a digital copy of this book! This book is due for publication 9/6/22 and I recommend it.

πŸ’™ Mommy (@𝐭𝐑𝐚𝐭.𝐛𝐨𝐨𝐀𝐦𝐨𝐦) and Ronan (@π­π‘πšπ­π›π¨π¨π€π€π’π) approved βœ…

π‘»π’‰π’Šπ’” π’“π’†π’—π’Šπ’†π’˜ π’˜π’Šπ’π’ 𝒃𝒆 𝒑𝒐𝒔𝒕𝒆𝒅 𝒐𝒏 π‘¨π’Žπ’‚π’›π’π’ 𝒐𝒏 π’‘π’–π’ƒπ’π’Šπ’„π’‚π’•π’Šπ’π’ π’…π’‚π’š!

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I really enjoyed this sweet exploration of emotions. I loved how each motion was compared to a familiar animal at the zoo. It equipped the reader with a fun way to describe their feelings. The art and rhyme married together so nicely! Highly recommend.

Thank you to NetGalley and Magination Press for the opportunity to read and review this book.

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Magination Press, the publisher of this book, is the children's book imprint of the American Psychological Association. With backing like that, you are right to expect a high-quality addition to any library. The fanciful illustrations and rhyming text make this a perfect storytime read for a Social Emotional Learning or Mindfulness program. The pictures are cute (and nuanced) enough to revisit over and over again. The endpages feature the characters in the zoo, so it was a fun seek-and-find to see which characters interact with each other is certain situations. The Brave hippopotamus frustrated the Annoyed porcupine but seemed to excite a Playful otter at the pool, for instance. I highly recommend this one!

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This is an absolutely wonderful story that teaches young children about emotions.

"My Zoo" develops an association of wild animals with feelings to help young children understand and explain their emotions. This book creates an opportunity for children to learn a new way to communicate their feelings, they are able to associate how they feel with an animal instead of specific words.

The character designs are cute and the rhyming storytelling has such a playful rhythm.

I highly recommend this book for any young reader and elementary schools as it is a wonderful educational resource.

Thank you to NetGalley and American Psychological Association, Magination Press for the opportunity to read and review this book.

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This cute book about feelings being like animals is all about accepting our feelings and finding a place to feel them without judgment. The book is told in a wonderful rhyming scheme that keeps a smile on your face. The art style is simple but evocative and there is great attention given to each of the animals presented and explored. I also love that the girl protagonist is casually POC. I loved it.

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Thanks NetGalley for the preview!

I loved this book! Comparing different types of animals to feelings can help little ones identify how they are feeling. This could also be used for imagination play-act as the animal and the feeling while others guess. I think this book would be very useful in any classroom! The pictures are adorable as well!

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The Zoo by David Griswold tells the story of emotions and compares them with animals. It allows children to pinpoint their emotions and feelings by using animal instead of trying to say the word itself. It is something all parents should obtain since sometimes people cannot express how they feel with words.

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This is a sweet book that touches on emotions in fun and child-friendly way. I especially liked the fact that the hippo was used to represent bravery, a move that seems to peek at body positivity even is the main character is depicted as skinny.

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As an early elementary school counselor I highly recommend this book for feeling identification! I love how each feeling is portrayed by both an animal and the human and the illustrations help to show why the characters are feeling the way they do. The book helps to normalize all feelings and also explains that you many have multiple feelings in one day! This would be a great tool for both small and large groups!

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the advance e-copy in exchange for an honest review.

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Oh my goodness, I LOVE this book. Using animals and their well known features as a way of introducing kids to emotions is EXCELLENT. The illustrations were some of my favorite (they had a graphic novel vibe) AND I really appreciate the acknowledgement that emotions are okay. That they all are inside of us--all of us.

This book is a must for school counselors and on library shelves.

I received this book from Netgalley in return for an honest review

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I was given this book as an eARC from the publisher for an honest review.

I like how each animal is a given a feeling. It is relatable to children and opens up a way for them to discuss their feelings. The book also shows how the feelings look and react in different situations. It justifies that feelings are what makes us…us.

One thing I would have liked to see is the girl to have an outlet for her emotions or a way to share her feelings, not just with herself.

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My Zoo is a great SEL book for counselors and teachers to use when talking about how we feel. I love how the author compared each feeling with an animal. This will help children learn how to describe how they are feeling.

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Thank you to NetGalley and American Psychological Association for the opportunity to read this book. I received this arc in exchange for my honest opinion.

I am a first grade teacher. Last school year -2021-2022– there was nothing more important than social emotional learning. Children came to school with bigger feelings than ever before.

This book would be another enormously useful tool to teach about emotions to go hand-in-hand with Zones of Regulation. It emphasizes that all emotions are okay to have and gives them likeable personas in the characterization of animals.

This book leads to fabulous conversations about what to do when your Lion is coming out/Jaguar is stalking/you’re feeling like a porcupine….kids can name and note which Zone each animal is and can discuss how we can handle each of the uncomfortable emotions.

This is a fabulous book that I will be sharing with my colleagues next school year. Thank you for this amazing resource!

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My family loved reading this book together! It provides a very relatable way to discuss feelings with younger children.

A little girl shares all the different animals that live inside her β€œzoo,” giving great examples for kids to identify and share their feelings. The message is very encouraging and accepting. This story shows that all of the different feelings are welcome, even on days when we experience them all at once!

I think this book would be a great one to have at home for toddlers and preschoolers to return to as they learn to identify and share their feelings.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for an advance copy in exchange for an honest review!

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