A Room with a Zoo - Hardcover

Feiffer, Jules

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0786837020 ISBN 13: 9780786837021

Publisher: Hyperion, 2005

Synopsis

Nine-year-old Julie decorates her room with a vast array of creatures, including a cat, a hamster, a fish, a turtle, a kitten, and a cranky hermit crab, all of which take over the house and her life, but she still wants more.

About this title

About the Author

Jules Feiffer is an acclaimed American editorial cartoonist, playwright, novelist, and screenwriter. Born in the Bronx in 1929, he cultivated his craft at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. He ran a Pulitzer prize winning comic strip column in the Village Voice for nearly 42 years. He has also written 26 children's books, several of them award winning. In 2004, he was inducted into the comic book hall of fame.

Jules Feiffer is an acclaimed American editorial cartoonist, playwright, novelist, and screenwriter. Born in the Bronx in 1929, he cultivated his craft at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. He ran a Pulitzer prize winning comic strip column in the Village Voice for nearly 42 years. He has also written 26 children's books, several of them award winning. In 2004, he was inducted into the comic book hall of fame.

Reviews

Grade 2-4–Writing from the point of view of his nine-year-old daughter, Feiffer recounts the pet-strewn pathway to her finally getting a dog. Her indulgent parents feed Julie's passion for animals by getting a string of substitute animals that don't need to be walked: a cat proves standoffish, so they buy a hamster to entertain the cat. Next comes a carnivorous fish that eats its companions. Then a turtle. This lengthy chapter book includes the child's various friends, school scenes, and a trip to the country to visit a stepsister, which produces yet another cat, but a warm and friendly one. The final chaos, which involves her father falling and throwing his back out, the girl trying to wash a murky fish tank by herself while keeping the cats and hamster apart, and an ensuing trip to the emergency room, reads like a Keystone Kops episode. It isn't until Julie bravely receives 19 stitches that she gets her dog. Feiffer's hilarious ink-and-wash illustrations keep Julie and the animals in focus. Some children may delight in the tone of the narration, the childlike logic, and the winning way she takes charge of her pets and herself by story's end. Others will be turned off by this overindulged child, the wordy text, and the somewhat ludicrous idea that you buy five or six other pets before getting the one that the child really wants.–Susan Hepler, Burgundy Farm Country Day School, Alexandria, VA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Julie, the nine-year-old narrator of this novel for children (whose father happens to be a cartoonist named Jules), has an urgent desire to own a Chihuahua. Instead, she winds up juggling a menagerie of substitutes—cats, hamsters, turtles, and the like—each with its own propensity for calamity. Not all the animals in this book survive. Julie's attempts to read her parents are richly nuanced—she knows to pay more attention to silences than to the things she's actually told. She also worries about how to love her reclusive, gangster-faced fish, works on her canine acquisition strategy, and gets caught up in some engaging slapstick. The cadences of Feiffer's writing are a pleasure to read aloud, and his pen-and-ink drawings propel the story by being simultaneously squirmy and lovely.
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Gr. 3-5. Feiffer delves into real life for this story of his eight-year-old daughter, which is told in her voice. What Julie wants most in the world is a dog, but her parents say she is too young. Instead, she gets Timmy, a sick kitten, who doesn't really cotton to people, so Hammy the hamster is added to the family. Alas, Hammy is eyed with way too much interest by Timmy; hence, a big fish, Oscar, is purchased to take Timmy's mind off the rodent. Unfortunately, a smaller fish gets eaten by Oscar. In rapid succession, another kitten, a hermit crab, and a dying rabbit on loan join the family. This is briskly written with lots of amusing moments, though some of them will be funniest to adults, who will sympathize with Feiffer's many trials, including an auto trip that's filled with cat vomit, a bad back from picking up Oscar's tank, and an altercation with the rabbit's owners who want the pet to die in Feiffer's house instead of their own. But kids will find Julie is a plucky heroine, and the satisfying ending sees her finally getting what she wants. Feiffer's distinctive drawings delectably capture the rousing events. Ilene Cooper
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Hyperion
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0786837020
• ISBN 13: 9780786837021
• Binding: Hardcover
• Illustrator: Feiffer Jules
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 192