Also, there are very few chapters in the book, with only a very few breaks within these chapters. These are some of the animals the reader will meet in the book but it has to be said that it takes a long time to meet them.

His favourites are perhaps a couple of Brazilian tapirs, but there's also Vlad, a Siberian tiger who loves trying to lick the author's hand through the fence, a bear called Fudge, with five inch claws which need regular trimming, not to mention a schizophrenic ostrich on Prozac. There are about two hundred animals now in his care, in the revamped Dartmoor Zoological Park. This is his true account of how he bought a failing ramshackle zoo, with the aim of rescuing and re-opening it to the public. But it is no fairy story, although there is a happy ending of sorts.īenjamin Mee is a journalist, with a talent for making what must have been a traumatic and nerve-racking experience sound both entertaining and poignant.

YouTube | Blog | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | Snapchat is the story of one man's dream, and how he achieved it. To be honest, I still enjoyed it but this is one of the those books where the movies made changes that I feel improved the overall experience of it. There's a bit too much emphasis on the process and not enough on the emotion and character development. It's certainly interesting to read about all the steps and hoops they jumped through in order to get a zoo back on its feet but it does feel.hmm. The author has previously written DIY guides and this book somewhat reads like one of those. If you saw the movie first, you would expect a heartwarming story all about love and loss, with a strong central story pulling it all together. So, I'm seeing a surprisingly large amount of lower ratings for this book, and I kind of get why. And there was no way the Mee family was giving up! To put it mildly, it was barely holding on - financially and to its animals.īut, where there's a will, there's a way.

And I promise you, something great will come of it.Benjamin Mee and his family.bought a zoo.Īnd that zoo? Whew. Just literally twenty seconds of just embarrassing bravery. You know, sometimes all you need is twenty seconds of insane courage. The May Reading Vlog (aka tier listing 30+ books) is up! Now that you know where this one ranks, click the link to check out the rest! The Written Review

Ben mee zoo