July celebrates the first full month of summer. It also starts with American Zoo Day on July 1st.
The Philadelphia Zoo opened in 1874. This was the first public zoo in the United States. At the time, people thought of zoos like museums—places to look at animals. Since then, zoos have shifted their focus to wildlife conservation, animal welfare, scientific research, and public education.
In Richmond we are lucky to live near the Metro Richmond Zoo! The Metro Richmond Zoo houses over 2,000 animals. Visitors can hand feed giraffes, camels, and birds. The zoo is also home to Kumbali and Kago, a hand-raised cheetah and his companion dog. It also features Poppy the pygmy hippo. Along with these are several other endangered, critically endangered, and vulnerable species.
In celebration of National Zoo Day, we are highlighting books that feature animals as the stars.
Wombat Waiting
Katherine Applegate
Wombat is actually a dog, not a wombat. A terrible fire destroys a community. Afterwards, rescuers find her singed and ash-covered. Someone nicknames her Wombat, and the name sticks.
Wombat is a “destiny dog.” An inner voice tells her that a special person is waiting for her.
She lives on a bench near the makeshift community center. The old brick warehouse mostly survived the flames. The local wildlife rehab sanctuary burned down. Therefore, workers moved the saved animals into the warehouse. The temporary quarters house an elderly fruit bat and a young Northern saw-whet owl.
Wombat refuses to move from her perch. Many humans try to move her, but they fail. Clearly, the dog waits for someone. Who is she waiting for? Did that person survive the fire?
Saucy
Cynthia Kadohata
Being a quadruplet makes standing out from the crowd difficult. For example, Becca’s three brothers all possess unique talents. Jake has his music and dancing, Jammer plays hockey, and K.C. believes they live in a simulation, so he avoids doing much of anything. Becca feels like the only sibling without a special trait.
However, everything changes when she finds a tiny, sick piglet on the roadside. Becca immediately knows this animal represents her true passion. Therefore, she names the piglet Saucy. Because of her passionate pleading and Saucy’s sweet face, Becca convinces her family to adopt the pig. Soon, Saucy becomes a major part of the household.
Meanwhile, the piglet keeps getting bigger. With each gained pound, Saucy destroys more of the house and lands Becca in trouble. As a result, Becca must make some tough decisions about her pet. Her search for a solution eventually reveals Saucy’s true origins. Surprisingly, she discovers a lot of other scared piglets out there. In the end, saving all these piglets will require Becca and her brothers to work together.
Pie
Sarah Weeks
Alice’s Aunt Polly, the Pie Queen of Ipswitch, just died. With her, the secret to her world-famous pie-crust recipe vanished.
However, a mystery remains. In her will, Polly leaves the recipe to her extraordinarily fat, disagreeable cat named Lardo. Furthermore, she leaves Lardo in Alice’s care.
The whole town wonders how someone leaves a recipe to a cat. Everyone wants to win the next big pie contest. As a result, the citizens become completely pie-crazy. Alice and her friend Charlie must investigate the clues in order to discover the true recipe for happiness. This recipe requires friendship, family, and doing things for the right reason.
Chomp
Carl Hiaasen
Wahoo Cray’s dad is a professional animal wrangler who takes a job with a reality TV show called Expedition Survival. Wahoo must wrangle his own father in order to protect Derek Badger, the show’s inept star.
However, the job quickly becomes much more complicated. First, Derek insists on using wild animals for his stunts. Then a girl named Tuna joins Wahoo as a shadow. Her father gave her a black eye, so she needs a safe hiding place.
They arrive on location in the Everglades where a bat bites Derek after just one day, and the star disappears during a terrible storm. Search parties head out but promptly get lost themselves. To make matters worse, Tuna’s dangerous dad shows up with a gun.
No one knows if anyone will actually survive this expedition.
Pawcasso
Remy Lai
Every Saturday, Pawcasso trots into town with a basket, a shopping list, and cash in paw to buy groceries for his family. One day, he passes eleven-year-old Jo, peering out the window of her house, bored and lonely. Astonished by the sight of an adorable basket-toting dog on his own, Jo follows Pawcasso, and when she’s seen alongside him by a group of kids from her school, they mistake her for Pawcasso’s owner.
Excited to make new friends, Jo reluctantly hides the truth and agrees to let “her” dog model for an art class the kids attend. What could go wrong? But what starts as a Chihuahua-sized lie quickly grows Great Dane-sized when animal control receives complaints about a dog roaming the streets off-leash. With Pawcasso’s freedom at stake, is Jo willing to spill the truth and risk her new friendships?
Song for a Whale
Lynne Kelly
From fixing the class computer to repairing old radios, twelve-year-old Iris is a tech genius. But she’s the only deaf person in her school, so people often treat her like she’s not very smart. If you’ve ever felt like no one was listening to you, then you know how hard that can be.
When she learns about Blue 55, a real whale who is unable to speak to other whales, Iris understands how he must feel. Then she has an idea: she should invent a way to “sing” to him! But he’s three thousand miles away. How will she play her song for him?
Full of heart and poignancy, this affecting story by sign language interpreter Lynne Kelly shows how a little determination can make big waves.
Flora & Ulysses
Kate DiCamillo
It begins, as the best superhero stories do, with a tragic accident that has unexpected consequences. The squirrel never saw the vacuum cleaner coming, but self-described cynic Flora Belle Buckman, who has read every issue of the comic book Terrible Things Can Happen to You!, is the just the right person to step in and save him.
What neither can predict is that Ulysses (the squirrel) has been born anew, with powers of strength, flight, and misspelled poetry — and that Flora will be changed too, as she discovers the possibility of hope and the promise of a capacious heart.
Once Upon a Camel
Kathi Appelt
Zada is a camel with a treasure trove of stories to tell. She’s won camel races for the royal Pasha of Smyrna, crossed treacherous oceans to new land, led army missions with her best camel friend by her side, and outsmarted a far too pompous mountain lion.
But those stories were from before. Now, Zada wanders the desert as the last camel in Texas. However, she’s not alone. Two tiny kestrel chicks are nestled in the fluff of fur between her ears, kee-killy-keeing for their missing parents. A dust storm the size of a mountain is taking Zada on one more grand adventure. And it could lead to this achy old camel’s most brilliant story yet.
A Cat Story
Ursula Murray Husted
A vibrant, heartwarming graphic novel about two irresistible cat friends on a journey to find their forever home–a journey inspired by the magic of art and storytelling.
Cilla and Betto are two friends who need a place to call home. The docks in Valletta are too wet, and the scraps of food too scarce. The city’s streets are too busy, and the humans too unreliable.
But what about the quiet garden from old kitten tales–a place where all cats are welcome, and the humans are always kind? Could the stories really be true?
As Cilla and Betto embark on a grand adventure to find out, they begin to spin a tale of their own–one that will take them through the art and stories of many journeyers who came before, and that will bring them to a surprising destination.
Rain Reign
Ann M. Martin
Rose Howard is obsessed with homonyms. She’s thrilled that her own name is a homonym, and she purposely gave her dog Rain a name with two homonyms (Reign, Rein), which, according to Rose’s rules of homonyms, is very special. Not everyone understands Rose’s obsessions, her rules, and the other things that make her different – not her teachers, not other kids, and not her single father.
When a storm hits their rural town, rivers overflow, the roads are flooded, and Rain goes missing. Rose’s father shouldn’t have let Rain out. Now Rose has to find her dog, even if it means leaving her routines and safe places to search.
Cress Watercress
Gregory Maguire
When Papa doesn’t return from a nocturnal honey-gathering expedition, Cress holds out hope, but her mother assumes the worst. It’s a dangerous world for rabbits, after all. Mama moves what’s left of the Watercress family to the basement unit of the Broken Arms, a run-down apartment oak with a suspect owl landlord, a nosy mouse super, a rowdy family of squirrels, and a pair of songbirds who broadcast everyone’s business.
Can a dead tree full of annoying neighbors, and no Papa, ever feel like home?
Appleblossom the Possum
Holly Goldberg Sloan
‘Possums,’ Mama says, ‘are the true performers of the animal kingdom. And all the world’s a stage.’
Young Appleblossom, the smallest one in her family, needs to find the role that she was born to play. She may be tiny, but she’s not timid, and when she accidentally falls down a chimney, she discovers that she’s also daring and quite clever. Inside the house are some of the monsters her mama has warned her about – the ones called dogs and people!
The curious Appleblossom, her faithful possum brothers (who launch a hilarious rescue mission), and even the lonely girl in the house are all about to discover new, amazing things about life, love, and how to act.
A Wolf Called Wander
Rosanne Parry
Swift, a wild wolf cub, lives with his pack in the mountains. When a rival pack attacks, Swift and his family scatter, and Swift sets out on an incredible journey through dense forests, into barren wilderness, and across flowing water.
The trip is dangerous and full of peril, and Swift encounters fire, hunger, hunters, and highways as he wanders. Will Swift find the courage to survive? Will he ever find a place to call home?
A Wolf called Wander is based on the extraordinary true story of a wolf named OR-7 (and often called Journey) – a wild wolf who traveled a remarkable 1,000 miles across the Pacific Northwest.
Poppy
Avi
Poppy knew she was taking a risk following her beloved Ragweed to Bannock Hill, but a night of dancing with the handsome golden mouse was just too tempting. So when Ragweed is scooped up by the sinister owl, Mr. Ocax, who rules over Dimwood forest, she’s devastated. Her whole life she was warned of Mr. Ocax’s evil ways…how could she have been so foolish to put herself and Ragweed at risk?
To make matters worse, when Poppy attempts to move with her family to a different part of the woods where the food supply is richer, Mr. Ocax refuses to let them go. Despite what she’s been led to believe for years, Mr. Ocax is not as strong as he wants the mice to think he is. Armed with the bravery, gumption, and wit of a hero, Poppy embarks on a dangerous quest—joined by the irascible but lovable porcupine, Ereth—to defeat Mr. Ocax and lead her family to a better home.
The One and Only Ivan
Katherine Applegate
Having spent 27 years behind the glass walls of his enclosure in a shopping mall, Ivan has grown accustomed to humans watching him. He hardly ever thinks about his life in the jungle. Instead, Ivan occupies himself with television, his friends Stella and Bob, and painting. But when he meets Ruby, a baby elephant taken from the wild, he is forced to see their home, and his art, through new eyes.
