The Way to the Zoo

Reviewed by: Carla McAllister - New Gloucester Public Library, New Gloucester, Maine, Southern Maine Library District

Review Date: October 22, 2014

Review

This is a story of little Sylvie who suddenly discovers a door in her bedroom which leads to stairs, a hallway, another door and ultimately to the zoo. She begins bringing small, furry animals into her bedroom at night, but then finds the bigger, smellier, noisier, thieving animals also want to come. All is fine if she returns the animals to the zoo each morning before school, but...as one can imagine, one morning she is running late and the animals are watching TV in the living and basically wreaking havoc in the house when she gets home. She speaks quite sharply at the animals and they retreat back to the zoo, and she cleans as quickly as possible, as Mom is due home soon. Will she make it? The illustrations are spare, some sketches are included, pastel colors and lots of white space. All these elements plus a fantastical story that little ones can relate to and possibly wish for, makes this a good choice for picture book shelves everywhere.

Overall Book Score: very good