Your two and a half year old can read this book by him/herself after you read it with them a few times! It is my daughter's favorite just like the Brown Bear, Brown Bear what do you see? book by the same author. The kids like to peep at the next page and see which animal it next and then read it. They learn a lot of new words from this book such as hissing, braying, bellowing, etc. And the most impressive thing is my daughter has learnt how to pronounce certain hard words from this author's books and she does just fine. At her age, she can actually say "boa constrictor" (one of the animals in the book) very clearly and with such innocence she reads the third last page as follows: "zoo peeker, zoo peeker, what do you hear? instead of zookeeper zookeeper! Thank you Bill Martin Jr and Eric Carle, for creating this book. I have had this book for months and my daughters still love it. It is nothing but the BEST !!!!