Meet the author

Rod Campbell.

Writer & illustrator · United Kingdom · b. 1945

Rod Campbell: Scottish creator of Dear Zoo — the canonical lift-the-flap board book, one of the most-given baby-shower books for ages 0–3 of the last forty years.

Rod Campbell is a Scottish author-illustrator born in 1945, best known as the creator of Dear Zoo (1982), the lift-the-flap board book about a child sending various inappropriate animals back to the zoo, which has sold over 10 million copies and remains one of the most-given baby-shower books in the English-speaking world. Campbell pioneered the lift-the-flap board-book format in the 1980s, and his catalogue, Dear Zoo, Oh Dear!, Buster's Bedtime, Noisy Farm, Dear Santa, My Presents, anchors the very-earliest-childhood shelf for ages 0–3. His style is bright, simple, character-led and deliberately durable for board-book handling. A genuine canonical-classic early-childhood author.