Maestro Stu Saves the Zoo

January 1, 2013
Stu loves the chorus of sounds he hears emanating nightly from the zoo. When a developer threatens to tear it down, Stu conducts an emergency plan to save it: a concert performed by the zoo's residents. Expressive paintings outshine the text, which is a vehicle for a stream of idioms that do little to enhance the story. An "understanding idioms" guide is appended.

(Copyright 2013 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)

September 15, 2012
An uneven tale of a boy saving his city's zoo. Young Stu and his mother both love the neighboring zoo. At night, it radiates a great animal music, sometimes soft and sometimes upbeat, but Stu is happy to conduct either like a symphony. Then the action shifts. A fat-cat developer--all skeezy-sleazy, with a nasty comb-over--wants the zoo's land for a mall and easily buys the city council by padding their pockets. The animals get wind of their fate and take stock. This is the most droll part of the book, with the polar bear "coming apart at the seams." "Pull yourself together," instructs the rhino, while the tiger admonishes the slothful sloth to "get your head out of the clouds!" Here readers begin to appreciate that there has been an overarching other-interest all along: that artful expression, the idiom. Then they will start hunting for them: weak at the knees, wear your heart on your sleeve, mad as a wet hen, selling like hotcakes, all ears and wee hours. Which is a good thing, for the story itself is rather artless. Stu conducts the animals in a public forum, and they are a hit. The developer becomes the pooper-scooper at the zoo. One steady hand throughout is Bowers' artwork--light but lush and charged with character and emotion. As a hunt-and-peck for idioms, this can be fun and even educational; as a story, this can be forgotten. (Picture book. 6-10)

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December 1, 2012

Gr 1-2-An unsuccessful attempt to blend an unoriginal boy-saves-zoo story with idioms. Young Stu has always loved the zoo, particularly the animal noises he hears from his family's nearby apartment. But the zoo is under threat from Mr. Cooper, who plans to build a mall in its place. Lion calls all of the panicking animals to a brainstorming meeting, which seems more like an excuse to use half a dozen idioms. Stu surprises the animals with a solution, causing the ape to gratuitously say, "Well, I'll be a monkey's uncle." The sounds Stu enjoys, which his mother calls "a symphony," are the key to saving the animals. The next morning, as Stu conducts, the animals attract attention and applause with their musical performance and save their home from Mr. Cooper, who becomes their new pooper-scooper. While idioms can be entertaining in moderation, they become almost painful when they are forced into a story. Even Bowers's rich and colorful illustrations, which depict mildly anthropomorphized animals, aren't enough to make up for the didactic text. The heavy use of cliched phrases would make this a challenging story for a child to read, even with the list of idioms and their meanings to refer to in the back of the book. The clunky text also keeps it from being a good read-aloud. For a silly and more kid-friendly introduction to idioms, try Tedd Arnold's Even More Parts (Dial, 2004).-Marian McLeod, Darien Library, CT

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