Every child should have this book! Its full of so many photos of all different kinds of animals and lots of great information as well. My three year old loves to page through this book and the information is concise enough that I can quickly read a page or paragraph and tell her about the animal, yet it has enough info that we both learn something new. We plan to use this as a resource for many years to come, but its great just for looking at pictures even now! I think it should come in hardcover, but I couldn't tell if the hardcover version was the same or if it was an older edition since it looks different. We have the soft cover and it looks like will hold up ok, but being such a big heavy book I'd rather it was hard cover. Oh well. I debated between this book and the "my first" version and chose this, I'm glad I did, the "my first" just didn't seem to have as much info or animals in it as this one. This one isn't overwhelming either, its great!