Worms for Breakfast: How to Feed a Zoo by Helaine Becker (review)

Feeling peckish? This book has a solution for you, at least if you’re a bat, fish, elephant, or parrot. Each spread cheerfully describes a particular animal or feeding problem (how do you nourish a sick koala? What do you do with an overweight elephant?) and offers a genuine zoo recipe, complete with helpful details such as “heads and intestines removed” and “dried ants to taste.” Sidebars include brief interviews with zoo nutritionists, occasional puzzles, and additional information. This is a nibble where the Scientists in the Field approach is a meal, but it’s a fascinating buffet; the recipes give a you-are-there verisimilitude, and the book is open and informative about the challenges of feeding animals in captivity, in different climates, and sometimes in ignorance of their actual diets. The layout is showily over the top, with loud borders, multiple fonts, and the recipes tilted and layered with drop shadows. The art itself is a high-impact mixture of amusingly manipulated photocollage for the animals and digitally created humans; while it’s at the expense of clearly showing the actual featured critters, the result is entertainingly surreal as cartoonishly distorted animals cavort together. Animal lovers, especially the reluctant readers among them, will delight in the browsable approach and the window into zookeeping; you might even want to encourage them to whip up one of the less nauseating recipes. End matter includes animal advocacy tips, a glossary, a key for the puzzles, and an index.