Petting Zoo is a fantastic storybook app for the iPad and iPhone. It features beautiful, fun, interactive animations of over 20 animals, and it’s bound to be a big favorite for kids and animal lovers of all ages.

Here’s a slice of its App Store intro:

From acclaimed author and illustrator Christoph Niemann comes this interactive picture book. Swipe and tap the 21 animals and be surprised at how they react. This app combines the charm of hand made animations and Niemann’s wry humor with state of the art technology. What would an elephant in your bathroom do? Can a dog breakdance? A storybook app unlike all others!
• Thousands of frames of hand-drawn animation
• Playful, musical sounds for each animal
• Fun for all ages, from infants to adults
• No english required; animals don’t speak english

I saw the app mentioned at Daring Fireball recently and decided to give a it a try yesterday. I’m very glad I did and I’ve already gifted the app to my daughter as I know she’s going to love it too.

This is a storybook with no words. Instead it offers superb and varied images and animations that are all interactive. Just to name a few quick examples, you can do crazy things with a lion’s mane, tap and swipe and adjust how many quills a porcupine has, and tap on an alligator’s teeth and it’s almost like you’re playing a musical instrument

My words just won’t come close to doing this app justice, so I did a quick screencast to show it off properly. Apologies for the very low volume when trying to demonstrate the alligator / crocodile’s teeth and the musical sounds.