"The animal bop won't stop"

A short, simple rhyming text calls on small children to join in a dance.

The words are easy to read aloud and would be fun, perhaps, to share with a small group of co-operative pre-school children and try out the suggested movements. If you want to get your kids dancing, this might not be the best choice at bedtime, and my boys are a bit wary of directed activity (so we exercise them in the park).

The illustrations are the best part of the book though, and would make it borrowing the book to see if children enjoy it enough to make it worth buying. They are lively paintings of dancing animals. They definitely err on the cute side. Even the growly lion looks more cuddly than fierce, and the other animals shown include lambs, meerkats, giraffes and koalas, all popular in children's books because of their attractive and apparently unthreatening appearance. If you plan to take them to the seaside, it might be a good idea to remind children that jellyfish are not as nice as they look here.

That said, I do enjoy looking at this book, and it is worth looking for in the library for its visual appeal, and to see if it captures your children's imagination.

The book is published by Oxford University Press, and our copy is of the hardback. A paperback edition with a CD included is available for £7.99 RRP rather than £10.99 (and currently for £7.19 at Amazon) and seems like better value.

A version of this review originally appeared at www.thebookbag.co.uk