The Zoo Inside Me brilliantly captures the swirl of confusing and sometimes unmanageable emotions that are inside us all and especially children.
How can they be explained and what do they feel like? What happens when you are part dragon or part monkey? Or part Dolphin and part Skylark? And do you have to become a chameleon to fit in?
Some answers as how it feels to be these different creatures at different times are offered here in simply described words which are well-matched with vigorous and colourful illustrations. A book to enjoy but also a useful way of discussing complicated emotions.
Sometimes we feel brave as a lion or shy like a mouse, and the zoo inside our heads reflects how we behave on the outside... You can't see it, but this little boy is part mischievous monkey, part curious llama, and part chameleon, hiding from the world.
Sometimes it feels like there's not enough room for our jumbling feelings, but the zoo inside all of us makes us who we are - reaching out to the world from the part you can't see.
Ruth Doyle always planned to be a writer, but trained as a nurse and studied social care first in order to gain a better understanding of people of all ages and walks of life. She lives on a micro-farm in Kent with her family and an assortment of animals.
A message from the author, Ruth Doyle; I was asked to write this story by a friend whose son had just started school. He is on the autistic spectrum and was finding school life really hard. Like many neurodiverse children, he didn’t have an innate understanding of the signals that came more naturally to other children. In my spare time, I run an animal sanctuary and one day, while watching the dynamics of our horses, I thought about how they interact with the world in such an authentic and spontaneous way. I considered how, as humans, we have to learn to control our responses in order to fit in. There was an obvious synergy which I thought children would enjoy and relate to – that there is a Zoo of incredible creatures inside everyone… and sometimes we all struggle to contain it!
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