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Talking
pointDecember 2019 BBC Wildlife 71T
o quote the immortal words
of Hot Chocolate’s Errol
Brown, it started with a
bear. OK, that might be
paraphrasing a little, and
it’s unlikely the song would
have been as big a hit with
that title, but it works for me.
You see, when I was a nipper – and
when I say nipper I mean foetus – I
was introduced to a podgy bear and his
woodland-based chums. It was down to
my mother, who (so she claims at least- and I have no reason to disbelieve her)
read Winnie the Pooh stories to me when
I was but a bump in her belly.
This literary ritual continued when I
moved home from womb to room, and for
the first few months of life I was swaddled
with tales of Pooh and Piglet, woozles
and heffalumps, hyperactive tigers and
depressive donkeys.
I’m far from alone in being introduced
to both books and animals from a very early
age – and more often than not the two go
hand in paw. Along with cuddly toys and
family pets, books are often a child’s first
introduction to wildlife.
A quick check of the top 15 board books
for babies on Amazon reveals that the
following animals feature on the covers:
lion, giraffe, bear, crocodile, dinosaur (do
extinct creatures count?), cat, dog, duck,
rabbit, squirrel, pig, cow, camel, mouse and
duck-billed platypus.
Further up the age range, you’ll find
a menagerie of beasts large and small
populating the pages of picture and chapter
books – from Eric Carle’s perennial classic
The Very Hungry Caterpillar and the late
Judith Kerr’s The Tiger who Came to Tea, to
favourites such as Charlotte’s Web and The
Animals of Farthing Wood.
It has been thus for time immemorial.
Well, a good few years at least. Depending
on which generation you belong to, you’ll
probably have fond memories of at least
one book in which animals were at the
heart of the story.T
hose of a more mature
disposition may get a rosy glow
when they see a copy of The Tale
of Peter Rabbit, or one of Beatrix
Potter’s other books from that
world – although many children today will
be as familiar with Peter, Mrs Tiggy-Winkle
and co as their great-grandparents are.Fast forward and those who were kids
in the 1950s and ’60s will be fans of The
Cat in the Hat or Paddington Bear. The
1970s saw the birth of Mog, the Forgetful Cat
and Fantastic Mr Fox, while the 1980s and
beyond has seen everything from Where’s
Spot? and The Sheep-Pig to The Wonky
Donkey and Oi Frog!
If you have young children or
grandchildren, have a gander (yes, that was
intentional) at their bookshelf and it’s odds-
on a hefty proportion of them will feature
animals in some form – either in their
natural state or as anthropomorphic stand-
ins for humans. It’s a fact: where kids are
concerned, animals are big business.
But why? What is it about animals that
children respond to so well? And why have
authors returned to them time and again
over the decades, centuries even? Is it just
that they’re cute and fluffy? Partly, of course- but the truth is more complex.
On an educational level, they teach
kids about the characteristics of common
creatures and the noises they make.
Often among the first words a child will
say, along with “mama” and “dada”, are
animal sounds like “woof” or “moo”.
The educational element is positive in