I own a tremendous amount of young adult books. It is time to start going through some of them and go back to a genre that I enjoy.

Whit is eleven years old. His entire life is spent at the zoo in Alabama where his mother is the director and his father is the head keeper of the elephants.

As many pre-teens, life-changes call to them and Whit is no exception. He is home schooled, helps with the animals (the giraffes are his favorite), but longs for a life outside of the zoo.

Feeling that his parents care for the animals more than they care about him, and watches as the animals take precedent. Increasingly, he longs for friends and to have a life outside of the confines of the zoo. Unable to express his frustration to his parents, he places himself in a dangerous situation when he meets a girl who comes to the zoo every day and draws the birds.

Named the Bird Girl, Whit befriends her and learns of severe problems at home. When he leaves the zoo and disobeys his parents to go home with Stella, he learns that her family is incredibly dysfunctional dangerous. When he hides Stella at the zoo in order to escape her father's rage, there are nasty consequences for some of the animals and Whit and Bird Girl Stella. ( )

Whit lives at the Meadowbrook Zoo, where his mother is the director and his father keeps the elephants – and they both seem to care more about the animals and the zoo than they do about Whit. His homeschool teacher Ms. Connie really gets him, but what Whit really wants is a friend his own age.

So when he gets up the courage to talk to the Bird Girl, who comes every day to draw birds, they strike up a close friendship. He even breaks his parents’ rules and leaves the zoo to walk to Stella’s nearby apartment with her. But there he realizes just how bad her life is.

Whit worries as Stella comes and goes, but eventually he will have to make a difficult decision about the best way to be a good friend to her…even if it makes her angry.

The author of this book is from Birmingham, so you may recognize some of the places in it. The setting is Meadowbrook, but the zoo and the botanical gardens are right next to each other, and there is an apartment complex nearby. Sound familiar? ( )

This story centers around a boy named Whit whose parents run a zoo. He has lived at the zoo his entire life and always been homeschooled. When he meets a troubled girl he calls the Bird Girl, his life changes. She becomes his first real friend and he is drawn into her fragile life which involves a verbally abusive father. Whit begins to question his relationship with his parents and the life he has at the zoo. This would be a good book for 4th - 6th graders. ( )

The main character of this middle grade chapter book is 11-year-old Whit Whitaker, a boy who has lived his whole life at Meadowbrook Zoo in Alabama. His mother is the director of the zoo, and his father is head elephant keeper. Whit is home-schooled, so his only friends thus far have been the animals. Moreover, his parents seem to care more about those animals than him, and he resents it.

One day he meets a young girl, Stella, who comes to the zoo by herself to draw birds. They become friends and Whit is ecstatic. His entire focus is now on Stella, even though, as his teacher admonishes him: "No one – not even your parents – are the key to your happiness. You’ve got to find that – ‘ She tapped his chest with her finger. ‘In here.’”

[Okay, so his home schooling teacher isn’t the best on using correct grammatical tenses (viz, "No one ... are..."). But she has the right idea about matters of importance!]

It turns out Stella comes to the zoo by herself to escape a very bad situation at home. Stella tells Whit that he has no right to complain about his parents, given the reality of hers. Whit doesn’t know how to process the information. He feels horrible about Stella’s life, which does seem way worse than his own, but he feels like he has legitimate reasons to feel bad also: "Stella telling him that he couldn’t complain was like saying you can’t complain when you have a sore throat because there are people in the world who have cancer.”

And then there is the matter of Stella’s father. One reason she can’t tell her dad she comes to the zoo is because he thinks it is immoral to keep animals in captivity. Again, Whit feels conflicted:

"The animal rights people were all about returning animals to the wild. But they hardly ever had a plan for learning about the animals. And they cared even less about conservation. It was because of zoos that species like black-footed ferrets and Spix macaws and plains bison had been saved from extinction.”

And yet, Whit also knows that zoos don’t always have adequate funds to make sure the animals have enough space and don’t get bored. However, in the final analysis, he concludes, “for many of the animals in the zoo, freedom meant death.”

Matters come to a head both between Stella and her parents, and between Whit and his. And after a terrible accident at the zoo, Whit finally is able to separate out not only what is important from what isn’t, but how his own focus on the trees may have blinded him to the forest.

Discussion: There is a lot that is good about this book:

1. Mom has a more important job than dad!

2. Thinking about issues: is it okay to whine or feel pain or complain when there are others who are worse off?

3. Thinking about issues: are zoos ultimately moral or immoral?

4. Thinking about issues: how do we figure out what makes us happy?

All of these questions: I still think about them in my own head all the time!

On the other hand, there is something about the story that I found disconcerting, having to do with the ending, which I will discuss as vaguely as possible so as not to be spoilery. Is it really feasible anyone would be this dumb? Is it feasible no one would be mad or no one would suffer the consequences? Is it feasible it could be “gotten over” so quickly by everyone affected?

Evaluation: I think this book raises some great questions, and believe it would make a great discussion book for parents to read together with their middle grade children. I imagine kids will relate to many of the same things Whit worries about, like how one forms friendships, and what to do when friends ask you to do something that you don’t think is right. Additionally, the book contains many fun and interesting facts about animals and about zookeeping. It also includes some charming illustrations by Stephanie Graegin. ( )