review

ZUCCHINI – BARBARA DANA

By karen t. brissette

Posted on March 13, 2017

Zucchini by Barbara Dana
My rating: 4/5 cats
One Star

MARCH

it’s ferret bueller’s day off!!

as part of my personal reading challenges for 2017, once a month i will be revisiting a favorite book from when i was a little bitty karen and seeing if it holds up to my fond memories and determining if i can still enjoy it as an old and crotchety karen.

fingers crossed.

so: first things first. in answer to the question ‘does this book hold up?’ yes, it does. when i chose this for my reread project and added my intentions to goodreads, i was really surprised to see that NONE of my goodreads friends had read it. i thought this was one of those classic kid’s books from the 80’s like Bunnicula that everyone had read and loved, but it looks like i’m all alone out here, DESPITE the existence of the awesome cbs storybreak episode based on this book, which i saw when i was little. again, just me over here?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnDX3…

baby-karen’s review*

i love this book and when i grow up i want a ferret named zucchini and he will live in my shirt and i will feed him all of my vegetables and ginger snaps and i will kiss all of his whiskers.

adult-review:

i read this when i was a little girl who had never encountered a real ferret, so zucchini seemed like some exotic creature; a wriggling tube of energy that would be such a fun petfriend to have. now that i have known many people with pet ferrets, i’m less inclined to have a zucchini of my own, because they are kind of smelly and neurotic, although admittedly pretty damn adorable.

when they’re not going crazy

having read this again as an adult, i gotta say that although some of it is dated**, and there are a few head-scratchers about the plot, it’s an excellent book and you should all go grab a copy!

the review will probably contain spoilers, but it’s a middle grade book from the 80’s about a boy and a ferret—it’s not worth ruffling your feathers over knowing what happens.

this story is told from two perspectives: zucchini—an endangered black-footed ferret born in the rodent house at the Bronx Zoo who dreams of a world outside his cage, and billy—a 10-year-old boy who is cripplingly shy and loves animals, but has difficulty talking to his own species.

zucchini escapes the zoo and has several adventures in commuting (bus AND subway) before ending up at the 92nd street aspca, wounded and suffering from pneumonia. after more adventures, including a bitey dog, he ends up at the aspca’s children’s zoo, where he meets billy, and they become best friends forever.

the book does a lot of things well.

billy (eventually—it’s a long road) overcomes his shyness in a way that feels natural and not like some sudden transformation. and some of his difficulties with communication are my own:

He had trouble letting people know when he was pleased. It always sounded like he didn’t care.

also, his family: mother, stepfather, and little sister emma, are excellent. his bio dad is off living in l.a. and is selfish and uninvolved, but his mother is supportive and his stepfather is present and involved, although he does wish billy was a bit more…sportif. emma is great—her voice is done really well, and she comes across like a real five year old in a way that even i find adorable, and i’m not one to be charmed by little-girl-lisping. but her idea to be “the gigantic chicken monster from outer spaces” for halloween is genius, although billy doesn’t come across well in this particular exchange:

”The beak will be made of cheese,” she said.

“What beak?”

“The beak of the great chicken monster. I have it planned. The beak will be completely of old cheese. That way Mama won’t mind if I take it. It will be old cheese, and I will carve the beak with a spoon. Into this cheese I’m making a gripping place for my teeth, and then there will be this pointy beak coming out.”

“It’ll rot,” said Billy.

“No, it won’t,” said Emma.

“It’ll rot, and you’ll smell. No one will give you any candy.”

“They will,” said Emma with confidence. “And if I get hungry, I can eat it.”

“The candy?” said Billy.

“The beak,” said Emma. “I can chew it off from the inside.”

“That’s the stupidest thing I ever heard,” said Billy.

“I’m only five,” said Emma.

right? although there is a more troubling aspect to her character:

Emma was more interested in trucks. She had her own room, so she couldn’t complain about the animal pictures all over Billy’s walls, but sometimes she said they were queer.

what the what? i mean, kudos for a five-year-old girl shattering gender norms and being a fan of trucks and all, but is this just an unfortunate, antiquated use of the word “queer” to mean “odd,” or is emma a little bully in training?

there are also many important lessons to be found here, although some misinformation about squirrel saliva from a little girl. and here i must also commend miss pickett, who runs the children’s animal class at the aspca with unflagging patience, where she responds to questions respectfully (even those that involve squirrel saliva), and teaches them both about animals, and about social skills in a way that is both unpatronizing and also unusually progressive for the time. she does not think billy is one bit queer.

assorted lessons learned by our heroes during their adventures together and apart:

zucchini learns: courage, delivering on promises made despite resulting personal sacrifice, following his dreams, and thinking for himself.

billy learns: how to speak up for himself, how to be less afraid of other people, responsibility, and believing in himself or whatever.

and they both learn about love and affection.

and zucchini learns how to be wicked emo:

Zucchini blinked his tiny eyes in confusion. He tried to stand, but the room began to spin. His head ached, he was sick to his stomach and his foot throbbed with pain. He wondered if he would always feel this way. If that were true, he’d rather die. He lay down and closed his eyes. Nothing mattered.

and maybe a little racist:

What a fine cracker, thought Zucchini. What a nice boy.

now comes the part where i unfairly overanalyze the book.

let me reiterate that zucchini isn’t some pet store ferret, but an *endangered black footed ferret*. sunny the red panda escapes from the virginia zoo and gets a twitter account and mobs of people searching for her. zucchini escapes the bronx zoo and NO ONE CARES. and once he finds a new home at the aspca and escapes from there, billy basically kidnaps him for a day—admittedly after saving him from wandering onto the highway, but billy doesn’t notify the aspca that he’s found zucchini, they just hang out together at the park all day—no leash, no training, where billy feeds him hot dogs and sauerkraut, for goodness’ sake, and when billy eventually does bring zucchini back, there are no admonishments, just a very low-key “phew” but no further restrictions on his movement and he escapes AGAIN, all the way to oklahoma this time, and then at the end—spoiler spoiler—the aspca just GIVES zucchini to billy when he moves away. just cuz they like each other.

so i’m going to go grab myself an endangered species from the bronx zoo. they have like FOUR red pandas. one of them will be mine. i need a friend for sunny over here, after all. I AM JUST KIDDING—I DID NOT STEAL SUNNY, DON’T COME AT ME, ZOOKEEPERS!!

and NOW comes the part where i’m really childish. zucchini reacts badly when attempts are made to get him into a cage at the aspca, so miss pickett allows him to live in her mail bin (from which mail bin he escapes from the building TWICE) but she provides him with nowhere to poop. where does he poop? i know it’s not important to the story, but a wild animal allowed to roam an office is gonna need to poop somewhere, and it struck me as a kid and it struck me on my adult-reading that miss pickett’s in for a treat when she comes back to her office in the morning and realizes her oversight.

in any event, i’m glad i re-read this one, and i’m having such fun with this experiment so far. i’m thrilled to discover i am less crotchety than i thought i was! hooray!!! ALSO, just like with The Little Gymnast, revisiting this one made me realize there is a sequel!! Zucchini Out West!! WHAAAATTTT??? i am so excited!

* again, this is an imagined review, channeling baby-karen. i was not a book reviewer in my baby days.

** most notably in the lax attitude at airport security, but also the existence of the IRT and rock tumblers and harper & row and the fact that people are just smoking all over the place—in the office, in the airport, on the plane.

********************************************

okay, this time there is no bookplate. i know— i am as disappointed as you all are. however, apparently this book used to belong to my childhood friend nancy brillon, and i just negated her ownership of this and left my own mark like some sort of conquerer: