The Lost Zoo

by Countee Cullen, J. Brian Pinkney (Illustrator)

Poems explain why animals such as the Wakeupworld, the Squilililigee, the Sleepamitemore, and the Treasuretit did not get onto Noah's Ark, and are therefore not seen in any zoo today.

Genres: Poetry

95 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1940

About the author

Countee Cullen was was an American poet who was a leading figure in the Harlem Renaissance. He was raised in a Methodist parsonage. He attended De Witt Clinton High School in New York and began writing poetry at the age of fourteen.

In 1922, Cullen entered New York University. His poems were published in The Crisis, under the leadership of W. E. B. Du Bois, and Opportunity, a magazine of the National Urban League. He was soon after published in Harper's, the Century Magazine, and Poetry. He won several awards for his poem, "Ballad of the Brown Girl," and graduated from New York University in 1923. That same year, Harper published his first volume of verse, Color, and he was admitted to Harvard University where he completed a master's degree.

His second volume of poetry, Copper Sun (1927), met with controversy in the black community because Cullen did not give the subject of race the same attention he had given it in Color. He was raised and educated in a primarily white community, and he differed from other poets of the Harlem Renaissance like Langston Hughes in that he lacked the background to comment from personal experience on the lives of other blacks or use popular black themes in his writing. An imaginative lyric poet, he wrote in the tradition of Keats and Shelley and was resistant to the new poetic techniques of the Modernists. He died in 1946.

Reviews

[Jessica Burstrem · Rating 5 out of 5]

A quick, entertaining read -- whimsical, rhyming verse with some amusing footnotes that speak to the writing process itself -- and I realized that Cullen may have been doing Seuss before Seuss himself. This book was published in 1940, and Seuss's first book (the racist Mulberry St one) was only published in 1937 and wasn't very popular even then. Seuss's If I Ran the Zoo wasn't published until 1950. One wonders whether he'd read the Cullen book first.

[Barbara Lovejoy · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I was a child I really wasn't into silliness. I didn't even like cartoons. Now that I am an adult I thoroughly enjoy silliness. Maybe I am making up for all that lost time! :) Nevertheless, this book is super wonderfully silly, and I loved every page of it. Highly recommend it for all children (and adults!!! whether you watched cartoons or not!).

[Tim Kauffman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Delightful! It's a tragedy that this book has been allowed to fade into obscurity.

[Gina · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very silly. I like his more serious work better, but it is kind of charming that he did write something silly for children, and that he did it with his cat, so to speak.

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read for my Fantastic Beasts module- interesting when being related to animal studies scholarship.

[Alyx · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

[Amy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Christopher Cat tells Countee Cullen the story that was passed down from generation to generation in his family of the animals which were lost in the Genesis flood that didn't make it onto Noah's ark. There was an animal that opened up a different colored eye for every hour of the day. There was an animal that could find any lost thing. And there was even a walking snake. Each animal had a different excuse for "missing the boat". Some slept through the loading. Others thought they were important enough to not get left behind. And still others were too busy to make it aboard.

Cullen's story starts out interestingly enough. I especially like his inclusion of Christopher Cat as a source of the oral history of these extinct animals. Cullen certainly had quite an original idea for his book. However, I quickly lost interest when he switched from prose and short poetry to long poetry. The longer the poems got, the less interesting they became. I have difficulty imagining today's child grasping the more advanced English that he uses in his storytelling. I suppose that's why the librarian had to fetch this book out of storage for me when I requested it.

[Nancy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Have you ever thought about the animals that didn't get on the ark? Well Countee Cullen and Christopher Cat together tell the story poetically name each poor creature and tells their reason why they did not get on board. A very sweet collection.

[Yaoifan365 · Rating 4 out of 5]

I remember reading this book when I was younger, and I read it agian. I found a copy my mom had bought us and I read it. I felt kind for the animals that didn't take Noah's offer. I wish we still had some of them. They were so adorable!

[Natalie Moore · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book of morals for children.