Zoo Stories

With last week’s release of Betty White’s Betty & Friends: My Life at the Zoo and the upcoming film version of the memoir, We Bought a Zoo, starring Matt Damon, our nation’s menageries are in the news. USA Today recently interviewed White on her longtime relationship with the Los Angeles Zoo and Botanical Gardens as a trustee, benefactor and volunteer ("For Betty White It's Still Happening at the Zoo" Nov. 29, 2011). She told writer Bob Minzesheimer that she once had a friend named Gita – an Asian elephant, “who liked to have her tongue slapped,” and she was happy to oblige her.

We Bought a Zoo: The Amazing True Story of a Young Family, a Broken Down Zoo, and the 200 Wild Animals that Changed Their Lives Forever by Benjamin Mee relates the trials and tribulations of attempting to restore a dilapidated zoo and the comfort the project brought when tragedy struck the family.

If zoos intrigue you, here are a few more books (and one eVideo) to enjoy:

Life at the Zoo: Behind the Scenes with the Animal Doctors by Philip T. Robinson

Zoo: the Modern Ark by Jake Page

Zoo Story: Life in the Garden of Captives by Thomas French

Babylon’s Ark: The Incredible Wartime Rescue of the Baghdad Zoo by Lawrence Anthony

The New Zoos by PBS (eVideo)