Rod Campbell (born 4 May 1945) is a Scottish author and illustrator of several popular children's books including the classic lift-the-flap board book Dear Zoo.
Born in Scotland in 1945, he was brought up in Zimbabwe and returned to Britain where he completed a doctorate in organic chemistry.
In 1980 he became involved in children's publishing where he began designing innovative books with interactive elements and repetitive phrases.
Campbell says that he was inspired by seeing other early lift-the-flap books, such as Spot the Dog, and wanted to incorporate the flaps into a story so that they made sense.
[2][3] Enormously popular among the under 5s in Britain, the book has been translated into Albanian, Arabic, Bengali, Chinese, Persian, French, Gujarati, Hindi, Panjabi, Portuguese, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Somali, Spanish, Turkish, Urdu, and Vietnamese, as well as being published in a number of formats and alongside various merchandise.