You are a Bengal tiger cub, one of three -- Dacca, Rajpur, Raniganj -- abandoned by your mother. You are so cold and thin that someone with kind hands puts you on a heating pad and sits by you for hours, moistening your mouth with milk. When you give a weak cry and look up, there is a human face almost crying too.
Your new mother is Helen Delaney Martini, who has already raised a lion cub in her New York apartment. Tigers in the bathtub will be no problem for her and her husband, Fred. This remarkable book -- strikingly striped as tigers are, sympathetically spoken as any child could wish -- tells the story of Helen Martini, founder of the Bronx Zoo's animal nursery in 1944 and its first woman zookeeper.
"Lyon's succinct, yet elegant, prose emphasizes Martini's dedication to the animals in her care, detailing how she and her husband often spent evenings at the zoo tending to the needy babies. Catalanotto's watercolor, charcoal, and torn-paper art is particularly effective here. Appropriate for a story set in the 1940s and 50s, his charcoal drawings suggest old newsreels....An author's note fills in some details of Martini's life and mentions her autobiography, My Zoo Family (1955). This will be popular with animal fans and classes studying zoos or careers." -- Kay Weisman, Booklist
Recommended Age | 5 - 9 |
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Author | George Ella Lyon |
Illustrator | Peter Catalanotto |
ISBN | 068984221X |
Publication Date | Mar 1, 2003 |
Publisher | Atheneum Books For Young Readers |
Language | English |