Welcome to the Zoo
30 Short Stories about Animals, Sometimes Funny
Themes of cooperation and belonging run throughout the heartwarming short story collection Welcome to the Zoo.
In Paul Smith’s short story collection for children, Welcome to the Zoo, animals face problems that require them to work together.
In each of these thirty stories, groups of animals team up to solve a mystery, rescue their friends from danger, or navigate personal and cultural differences. Forest animals help their fellow creatures escape imprisonment in a zoo in “Freedom.” Billy the bunny confronts bullies and makes new friends in “Animal Kingdom Elementary.” A bulldog, fox, and raccoon adjust their priorities when their beaver colleague gets stuck in a bear trap, setting back their months-long construction project, in “The Injury.”
Many of the stories follow a similar format: the animals attend a conference or party where the host presents a problem, often in the form of someone going missing or a food source dwindling; a group of animal volunteers use teamwork to solve the problem and help those who get stuck in brambles or cliffsides along the way; then the community comes together in celebration. The conflicts vary in their levels of intensity throughout, and the action scenes are often rushed through.
Familiar archetypes—there’s a wise owl, a regal lion, a sly fox, and a naughty hyena—permeate the book as well; individuality is lost among the stories’ large casts. Further, the animals’s formulaic speech patterns lean into moral didacticism, and their voices run together because of insufficient markers. In their discussions, the animals spend ample time contemplating the problem; later, they devote considerable time to rejoicing in their successes, too—even when the issues they faced required little effort to solve. Each tale ends with the animals reflecting on their experiences together and promising to respect their differences going forward.
The stories that deviate from the book’s overarching structure are welcome adventures, as when Freddy the fox impresses the crowd with his guitar-playing prowess to bring joy to the forest with an inclusive performance in “The Orchestra.” Some standout heroes appear as well, including prideful Quillsworth the porcupine, who learns that true heroism is doing what’s right regardless of whether someone is watching. And when the animals unite in compassionate solidarity after weathering dangerous storms or liberating creatures from oppression, their celebrations are heartwarming.
Themes of cooperation and belonging run throughout the collection. The animals celebrate Easter, Passover, and Ramadan; they discuss LGBTQIA+ issues and speciesism. A story about a transgender boy sheep extols compassion and celebrates differences, though the sheep continue to use she/her pronouns, confusing this message. And there are, on occasion, mature premises that exist at odds with the bulk of the collection, as when squirrels are caught cheating at poker in a casino that serves cocktails.
Welcome to the Zoo celebrates community and teamwork through thirty children’s stories featuring talking animals.
Reviewed by
Aimee Jodoin
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book and paid a small fee to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. Foreword Reviews and Clarion Reviews make no guarantee that the publisher will receive a positive review. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
