Inspiring Young Readers

posted on 05 Mar 2026

Animal Snap Forest and Animal Snap Ocean by Mel Matthews

Sharing an engaging picture board book with a young child is a pleasure that I always enjoy and have written about several times before. Babies will learn to reach out to explore the pages and home-in to focus on the illustrations while listening to the voice of the reader and begin to join in with appropriate squeals and other noises. Encouraged by enthusiastic adults, they will soon show preferences when presented with a choice and begin to have favourite books that will be a delight to share with them over and over again. As their vocabulary and perceptual skills develop, they will be able to recognise and name familiar shapes, colours, characteristics and become fully involved with pointing, guessing and predicting what comes next. I recently shared these two fine examples with a twenty- month-old family member to see how he would react to the unusual design of a book within a book – both pleasingly chunky. 

Animal Snap Forest

This was an immediate hit because of the cover showing a flying Owl staring out at us and a smaller picture of a fox cub playing with a butterfly in the corner. He named both of the creatures and then started to slowly turn the pages of the smaller book. He was able to look at and identify all of the animals but got rather cross at their names which are to teach children about the correct names of animal babies eg the Bat page states ‘I’m a pup’ and the Squirrel page states ‘I’m a kit’. I decided not to argue with him as this might be something to return to when he is a bit older. We then moved on to the bigger book which shows the same animals with a brief description of their babies in the smaller book. He very much enjoyed turning the pages to find the right match and happily named them as ‘Baby Bat’ and ‘Baby Squirrel’ etc. I really liked the bold colours used to show all the animals in their natural habitat and we spent some time looking at the details in the background. 

Animal Snap Ocean

When I first showed him this one, he immediately went to fetch the companion book from across the room and placed them carefully side by side. I found this interesting because when I tried to add another very different, but equally lovely book to the selection, he pushed it away saying ‘No!’  I took this to mean that he recognised and was a fan of the unusual format. This time he opened the bigger pages first and was able to name all of the creatures, looking for the right babies in the smaller book as we went along. He is a curious child who has lots of experience of looking at books, but I was surprised that he knew what to do without any prompting. Once he had finished, he wanted to start all over again with both of the books and we spent another half hour playing the matching game. He particularly liked the Turtle and the Fish and lingered over those pages naming the colours and singing his own little song about swimming in the water.     

We strongly recommend these interactive and very entertaining picture books that will encourage plenty of talk about different kinds of forest and ocean animals. There are also two more in the series published by Templar Books. They should all be available from your local independent bookshop who will order you copies if not already on their shelves. 

Karen Argent

March 2026