Customer Reviews

The Lost Zoo

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This book is a collection of fourteen poems telling the story of Noah's Ark and several strange animals, such as the Squilililigee, the Lapalakes, and the Ha-Ha-Ha, that perished in the flood because they did not make it onto the Ark. As explained in a prose introduction to the poems, the story was told to Cullen by his cat Christopher, with whom Cullen shares credit for the work. Christopher also annotates the poems with his own verse notes providing more detail on certain events in the story and scolding Cullen for incorrect grammar.

The poems are highly imaginative and fun to read aloud, with varying rhyme schemes and meters, capturing the characters of the different animals described. The poems have understated morals - if the Sleepamitemore had not been so lazy and the Double-Headed Hoodinkus not so quarrelsome, they would have survived - but are much more focused on being silly.

The prose introduction from Cullen explaining how his relationship with Christopher Cat came to be creates a strong feeling of kinship with both narrators. A prose epilogue encourages us to reconsider Christopher's reliability as a narrator, while at the same time challenges us to consider the inner lives of our own pets.

The poems are accompanied by illustrations of the various animals that did and did not make it on the Ark. The illustrations, done in color-washed black and white line drawings, are dark with a loose, sketch-like quality. Though not tightly integrated with the text, the illustrations do give life to the fantastical creatures described in the poems. Younger children will enjoy the rhythm and the subject matter of the poems themselves and older children will enjoy the explanation of the origins of the poems.

Christopher Cat tells Countee Cullen the story that was passed down from generation to generation in his family of the animals which were lost in the Genesis flood that didn't make it onto Noah's ark. There was an animal that opened up a different colored eye for every hour of the day. There was an animal that could find any lost thing. And there was even a walking snake. Each animal had a different excuse for "missing the boat". Some slept through the loading. Others thought they were important enough to not get left behind. And still others were too busy to make it aboard.

Cullen's story starts out interestingly enough. I especially like his inclusion of Christopher Cat as a source of the oral history of these extinct animals. Cullen certainly had quite an original idea for his book. However, I quickly lost interest when he switched from prose and short poetry to long poetry. The longer the poems got, the less interesting they became. I have difficulty imagining today's child grasping the more advanced English that he uses in his storytelling. I suppose that's why the librarian had to fetch this book out of storage for me when I requested it.