In this factual, playfully illustrated picture book, children who visit the zoo will be surprised and delighted to discover that they're in good company--thousands of years' worth of company.
"The world's first known zoo" was in the Sumerian City of Ur, in present-day Iraq, 4,400 years ago. The king of Ur roared at the lion he kept in his zoo, which made him feel "like the ruler of all nature." Krull skips around the globe to identify other zoos and the purposes they served: Queen Hatshepsut showed off her zoo of "expensive" animals in Ethiopia 3,500 years ago; 3,000 years ago in China, a "vast zoo" called "The Garden of Intelligence" was a sacred space for Emperor Wen-Wang. Marcellus Hall's (Everyone Sleeps) animals are the only things that are not exotic. Young readers will pick out the cheetahs, goats, yaks and turtles in the pictures, and if an animal here or there does not make it into the illustration, kids can easily look it up in Kathleen Krull's (the Lives Of series) abundant hard-copy and online sources. Krull also ties in the inspirations these zoos served, such as Aristotle's The History of Animals and System of Nature by Carl Linnaeus, in which he classified animals into species. Animal lovers will be especially pleased that the U.S. National Zoo was the first to claim a mission to protect animals under threat of extinction in 1889.
Zoo fans will love learning they're part of a continuum of children that stretches back longer than eyes can see. --Jennifer M. Brown, children's editor, Shelf Awareness