Shawn
This one surprised me. I expected a straightforward WWII rescue story and got something much richer — Ackerman writes like a naturalist, all sensory detail and close observation, and she uses that gift to build the prewar zoo world so vividly that when it gets destroyed you actually feel the loss. Jan and Antonina Żabińska are remarkable people, but what makes the book work is the small stuff: a badger using a training potty, a muskrat stuck in a chimney, a carnivorous attack rabbit named Wicek, a sculptor who hides from the Gestapo by running for the closet every time someone plays Offenbach. The weight of what the Żabińskis were doing never leaves — Hans Frank’s death decrees hang over every page — but Antonina’s insistence on filling the house with animals and music and humor is its own kind of argument about how to survive.
This one surprised me. I expected a straightforward WWII rescue story and got something much richer — Ackerman writes like a naturalist, all sensory detail and close observation, and she uses that gift to build the prewar zoo world so vividly that when it gets destroyed you actually feel the loss. Jan and Antonina Żabińska are remarkable people, but what makes the book work is the small stuff: a badger using a training potty, a muskrat stuck in a chimney, a carnivorous attack rabbit named Wicek, a sculptor who hides from the Gestapo by running for the closet every time someone plays Offenbach. The weight of what the Żabińskis were doing never leaves — Hans Frank’s death decrees hang over every page — but Antonina’s insistence on filling the house with animals and music and humor is its own kind of argument about how to survive.