Collection: Make Believe Ideas

The publisher behind Never Touch, and the Zoo Crew made with London Zoo

Make Believe Ideas have been making children's books since 2004, and two of their ranges do the heavy lifting in our shop: the Never Touch series, and the Zoo Crew. If you've arrived here looking for one specific book, the sections below will get you there faster than scrolling.

🦁 Never Touch — the range that tells a toddler not to, knowing full well they will

The joke is the whole design. Each spread insists you mustn't touch the animal, and then puts a silicone patch right there on the page — bumpy, squashy, ridged — so that of course they do. It is a genuinely clever way to get small fingers onto a page.

We stock the full range, from Never Touch a Sleepy Lion and Never Touch a Dinosaur through to Never Touch a Spider, Never Touch a Capybara and Never Squish a Unicorn. Most are silent, touch-only books — the two Noisy titles, a Noisy Cow and a Noisy Monkey, are the ones that add sound, which is worth knowing before you gift one to somebody else's household. See them all together in Never Touch Books.

🦒 Zoo Crew — made with ZSL London Zoo

A collaboration with ZSL London Zoo, built around a cast of characters rather than one-off titles — Lennon the Lion, Giggles the Giraffe, Sonny the Sloth, Echo the Elephant, Honey the Pygmy Hippo, Raffles the Red Panda, Pebble the Penguin Chick and Bouncy the Bush Baby. The range comes three ways:

• Plush toys — the characters themselves, soft and suitable from birth.
• Hand-puppet cloth books — a soft book with your hand inside the animal, for the sort of reading that involves a lot of eye contact and silly voices. Lion, giraffe, sloth and pygmy hippo.
• Clip & Go — small clip-on versions for the pram, the car seat and the changing bag, which is where most soft toys actually spend their lives.

There are two Zoo Crew books too: Never Touch the Zoo Crew and Don't Feed the Animals.

📖 And the rest of the list

Beyond the two big ranges there are lift-the-flap and play books for slightly older toddlers — Funny Feet, My First Busy Shop, My Lunch Box Play Book, Let's Mix Colours and The Toddler Play Book of Everything — plus Five Little Ducks, a silicone touch-and-feel counting book suitable from birth.

Which age are you buying for?

• From birth — the Zoo Crew plush and cloth books, and the touch-and-feel board books. Nothing here has small parts.
• Around six months — when a baby can sit up and reach, the Never Touch books come into their own. The silicone patches are the draw long before the story is.
• Eighteen months and up — the lift-the-flap and play books, which reward a toddler who can turn pages and follow a thread.

A note on board books and small hands

These are thick-board books built to be chewed, dropped and sat on. That said, no board book survives a determined teether indefinitely, and the silicone patches are set into the page rather than removable. If you want something genuinely washable for the very early months, our fabric and cloth baby books are the better bet.

❤️ From our family to yours

We're a small family business in Scotland, and Emma on our team is a qualified Early Years Practitioner — so if you're stuck between two titles for a particular age, ask us and you'll get a straight answer. Free UK delivery on orders over £25.