INSIDE THE ZOO NURSERY
by Roland Smith & illustrated by William Muñoz
From a biologist with 20 years of zoo experience (keeper to assistant director): a discussion of the special care, plus unusual procedures and equipment (diets, incubators, gravity-flow feeding tubes), needed to rear a wide variety of baby animals. It's a fascinating subject, but, unfortunately, the writing here is frequently awkward, and Smith tends to use unnecessarily demanding vocabulary and to present mature concepts without much explanation. Still, Mu§oz's glossy color photos of keepers cuddling, feeding, and caring for exotic charges—a newborn baboon, a nyala calf, cheetah cubs, an orphan porpoise, etc.—are unusually appealing, and persistent readers will be rewarded with a detailed, authentic behind-the-scenes look at these exotic young animals. Index. (Nonfiction. 10-14)