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Reviewed by:
  • What’s New? The Zoo!: A Zippy History of Zoos by Kathleen Krull
  • Deborah Stevenson, Editor
Krull, Kathleen. What’s New? The Zoo!: A Zippy History of Zoos; illus. by Marcellus Hall. Levine/Scholastic, 2014. [40p] ISBN 978-0-545-13571-9 $17.99 Reviewed from galleys Ad Gr. 2-4.

Zippy indeed is this speedy timeline of significant moments of zoo history that offers a paragraph about a historical zoo on each page, beginning 4,400 years ago with the Sumerian King of Ur’s private zoo. Subsequent stops range through great lights of early history such as Ethiopia, China, and Greece, covering private zoos of rulers and citizens and municipal zoos such as the one in the city of Alexandria. The nineteenth century sees the first publicly accessible zoo in London and the beginning of the notion of zoos as places of preservation; the twentieth century sees the disappearance of zoo cages in favor of wild environments and the growth of breeding programs. There’s plenty of interesting information here, balanced with lively details about pope-dousing elephants and celebrity giraffes, and the transformation of zoos from royal status symbols to their contemporary iteration is effectively conveyed. However, the hit-and-run approach to history leaves scads of questions unanswered (how did municipal zoos so grow in popularity in a mere few decades that Melbourne felt obliged to have one by 1862? How did all these zoos acquire their animals, and how did they keep them?) and stories without punchlines (what did Pope Leo X do after the elephant sprayed him?). New Yorker artist Hall imbues his figures with the same lithe, round-eyed cartoonish charm as mid-century magazine cartoonists such as Whitney Darrow, yet his ink and watercolor illustrations also have a bold nursery vigor; in fact, the art, despite its touches of artless sophistication, aims the pages to a younger audience than the text suggests. Animal lovers will find some intriguing anecdotes here, though, and this may sate the curiosity of zoo aficionados not yet ready for Zoehfeld’s Wild Lives (BCCB 4/06). A list of sources is appended. [End Page 582]

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