Shop Speechville Express Books and Toys Featuring Animal Sounds and Other Familiar (Non-Language) Sounds: Zoo Animals

These "non-language" sounds, also referred to as "onomatopoeia," are great for easing into speech work!


Inside a Zoo in the City
by Alyssa Satin Capucilli, Tedd Arnold (Illustrator)

From Booklist
Ages 2-5. The rhyming, cumulative text begins, "Here is the [parrot] that stretched/ and squawked / that woke the [tiger] that growled and stalked." The book substitutes a jovial little picture of an animal for each bracketed word, making this a rebus and offering playful practice for children who can't quite read yet. Here's the unspoken premise that emerges in the illustrations: the zoo animals sleep each night in their apartments in the city. It's five in the morning when they begin to wake up one another. One by one, they climb aboard a city bus and ride to their day jobs. They disembark and trundle off to their areas, where they look as sleepy as zoo critters often do. Now we know why! Arnold's playful line-and-wash drawings, textured with his signature squiggles, will amuse children on every page. Even parents will smile at the bus-riding chicken absorbed in reading the Stock Market News. Good fun. Carolyn Phelan
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved.

Who Hoots?
by Katie Davis

From Amazon
"Dogs don't hoot. Pigs don't hoot. Horses don't hoot. Owls don't hoot." Wait a second! "Yes they do! Owls have swively necks and stay up all night, and they definitely hoot!"
In this marvelous sequel to Who Hops?, author-illustrator Katie Davis creates a game brimming with all kids' favorite qualities: animals, repetition, and silliness. Extra-bright and colorful animals fill each page, looking alternately bewildered, bemused, and miffed. Nothing tickles a toddler's funny bone so much as nonsense--toying with what they know to be true. Lions do roar, bees do buzz, and yaks do quack--hold it! No they don't! Ducks quack. Easily adapted for hours of play on road trips or in waiting room lines, and a good refresher on animal sounds, this witty book will appeal to adults as well, especially with the critters' little asides. ("I'll hoot when pigs fly!" says the pig. "Well, I could [buzz] if I wanted to," mutters the bull. "Quack? That's quazy!" smirks the worm.) Children will love the last page, in which they're all but begged to hoot, buzz, squeak, roar, and quack. Parents may want to avoid this noisy story at bedtime! (Ages 3 to 6) --Emilie Coulter

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