The Avocado Drive Zoo: At Home with My Family and the Creatures We've Loved

by Earl Hamner Jr.

THE AVOCADO DRIVE ZOO is a warm and personal, yet humorous, recounting of how the members of the Hamner family have lived with and loved the animals in their lives. By the time they moved to Hollywood and settled into a lovely residence on Avocado Drive, their home was virtually a zoo.

Genres: Nonfiction, Animals

240 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 1999

About the author

Earl Henry Hamner Jr. (born July 10, 1923 in Schuyler, Virginia), was an American television writer and producer (sometimes credited as Earl Hamner), best known for his work in the 1970s and 1980s on the long-running CBS series The Waltons and Falcon Crest. As a novelist, he was best known for Spencer’s Mountain, which was inspired by his own childhood and formed the basis for both the film of the same name and the television series The Waltons, for which he provided voiceover narration.

Reviews

[Amanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a fun read! The author writes in such a way so you feel like you're right there, witnessing what he's describing.

Earl Hamner and his family have a zoo. Not literally, but their soft hearts and the melting eyes of the stray dogs means their yard is full of birds, cats, hamsters, dogs, and anything else that might come along.

The story is fun, easy to read, and inspiring.

[Judy · Rating 2 out of 5]

A sweet book about all the animals his family had or took care of as his kids grew up. Not how I thought a “country boy” from rural Virginia would handle animals normally considered pests. It’s a collection of stories about the different animals and not told chronologically so sometimes that was a little confusing. A good break from my usual serious, informative books, but I wouldn’t read again.

[Beverly · Rating 3 out of 5]

Earl Hamner, a living legend in television and film, penned this sweet autobiography of his family, both two and four-footed.

[Jennifer Collins · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are some sweet and incredibly amusing anecdotes about animals in this book, and it was also interesting to get to know the voice/writer behind two of my mom's favorite old shows (The Waltons and The Man from Snowy River)--but, at the same time, I'm not sure I'm all that likely to recommend this book to anyone (let alone my mom, who I would have thought of first). On the animal front--because, truly, that's why I picked up the book to begin with--Hamner has such a practical attitude, and is so unsentimental, that there were times when I just wasn't sure I wanted to read further. Animals' deaths were, for the most part, related so casually and with so little affect in the beginning that I learned a 'bad ending' would often enough follow up an anecdote; or, if not bad, at least sad or not good. As a result, every time I put the book down, I had mixed feelings about picking it up again. And while my interest was truly in the animals--and that's what the book proclaims itself to be focused on, after all--it often felt like Hamner was a little more interested in talking about his feelings about different animals, versus the animals themselves. So, where I would have expected them to feel a bit more real and distinct, that didn't always happen.

I think this came from the realist's perspective, but it put me off a bit. For instance, I have five animals now--each one of them has a distinct personality and quirks, as has been the case with every other animal I've had over the years. Yet, we didn't really see those 'quirks'/'personalities' of the animals in this book. We saw how the humans interacted with them, and we saw what the humans felt was worth observing... but for the most part, the animals felt more like props in the story than the focus of the story, and with Hamner's ultra-practical and rather curmudgeonly attitude throughout the book, the sweetest of the moments in the book were harder to fall in love with not because they were so rare or so sweet, but because the voice they were coming from and what they were surrounded by.

Am I glad I read the book? I'm not sure, to be honest with you. There were some great anecdotes, and it was a fast read, but a lot of it struck me in a sort of off way, and the parts about animals were so fast, so without detail that would have brought the animals/scenes to life, that I'm unfortunately hard-pressed to say I enjoyed all that much of the book. I was amused, often enough, but I'm not sure I can say more than that.

[Lydia Gates · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a wonderful book. Tender, sweet, well written and I was drawn in from the first to the last page. I loaned my copy to a friend, and she had similar comments.

[Mary Lou · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well-written, but some appalling animal husbandry.

[Cheryl · Rating 3 out of 5]

eloise recommends and has a copy I can read
---
Cute. I'm certainly glad he failed to introduce bobwhite quails though because who knows if they'd become invasive. And certainly there needed to be a lot more spay & neuter going on, and better fences. Poor Gus, killed by a larger male dog whilst in pursuit of a female in heat.

I did like the bit when he found one of the critter's bodies and didn't show his wife right away. "I wanted to spare you the pain." She wisely says, "Next time try sharing the pain." My husband could not master that lesson and now he's gone.

[Marcia Tambellini · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favorite books