We Bought a Zoo: The Amazing True Story of a Young Family, a Broken down Zoo, and the 200 Wild Animals That Change Their Lives Forever
by Benjamin Mee
Overview
FROM THE PUBLISHER
The remarkable true story of a family who move into a rundown zoo– already a BBC documentary miniseries and excerpted in
The Guardian.
In the market for a house and an adventure, Benjamin Mee moved his family to an unlikely new home: a dilapidated zoo in the English countryside. Mee had a dream to refurbish the zoo and run it as a family business. His friends and colleagues thought he was crazy.
But in 2006, Mee and his wife with their two children, his brother, and his 76-year-old mother moved into the Dartmoor Wildlife Park. Their extended family now included: Solomon, an African lion and scourge of the local golf course; Zak, the rickety Alpha wolf, a broadly benevolent dictator clinging to power; Ronnie, a Brazilian tapir, easily capable of killing a man, but hopelessly soppy; and Sovereign, a jaguar and would-be ninja, who has devised a long term escape plan and implemented it.
Nothing was easy, given the family’s lack of experience as zookeepers, and what follows is a magical exploration of the mysteries of the animal kingdom, the power of family, and the triumph of hope over tragedy. We Bought a Zoo is a profoundly moving portrait of an unforgettable family living in the most extraordinary circumstances.
My thoughts
This book was introduced to me via the previews of BAMM.com. I want to put a plug in for them because they've introduced me to so many wonderful books. Their book preview service is phenomenal!
I didn't actually buy the book from Bamm.com however; I downloaded it onto the eReader I received for Christmas. This is the first ebook I've read from cover to cover, and I'm pleased to say that I love my Amazon Kindle. It is such an easy read - a surprise to me as I absolutely hated reading books on my iTouch (which I otherwise absolutely love.)
Getting to the review of the book (finally!), it was a quite nice read. The book wasn't really what I expected, especially with the in-depth side story of Katherine, who was seriously ill throughout a good portion of the book. For a while I wondered if I was reading about a family that bought a zoo or if I was reading a book about the trials families face when they have a terminally ill loved one. I don't mean for that to sound harsh; it is merely a reflection on the content of the book. It was quite uncomfortable to be so intimately involved with the author's wife during an extremely difficult time in all their lives. It was a loving story and no doubt affected the author's ability to concentrate on the new zoo, but quite sad. I wasn't expecting that.
As for the rest of the book, it was what I bargained for. It was unpredictable and funny, terrifying and charming, and it's my hope that a sequel eventually makes it on the market!
Favorite Passage
...I had been in the enclosure several times before without incident. But that was in daylight, when Mr. Porcupine had better things to do, like snuggle up (carefully, I presume) with Mrs. Porcupine. Now I was on his patch, in his garden, on his time, and he didn't like it. As he paced up and down I gave him more space, with the result that he soon had me herded into a corner. At which point he turned his back to me at a distance of about three yards, then reversed at high speed, brandishing his motile array of beautiful barbs like a lethal Red Indian headdress. I just had time to register the extent of his displeasure, and the unacceptable consequences of staying where I was, before it was time to act, and I found myself scrambling backward in the dark, over the fence, and falling heavily on my rear into a patch of nettles on the other side.
