Anxious to see what life is like outside the zoo, Sammy the seal explores the city, goes to school, and plays with the children but decides that there really is no place like home.

Lyle is perfectly happy living with the Primms on East 88th Street in New York City until Mr. Grumps, their irritable neighbor, has Lyle put in the zoo.

Andy learns that he can swing and sway, stretch and swim, gallop, sing, jump, skip, and wiggle, just like the animals do at the zoo. Includes a lesson on counting one to ten.

After the zoo closes, monkey slips out of his cage to explore the zoo, introducing the reader to the other animals and the idea of opposites.

A memoir by Benjamin Mee, tells the true account of how the author and his family used their life savings to buy a dilapidated zoo, replete with 200 exotic animals facing destruction, in the English countryside. Mee, along with his children, had to balance caring for his wife, who was dying of brain cancer, with dealing with escaped tigers, raising endangered animals, working with an eclectic skeleton crew and readying the zoo for a reopening.

When his class goes to the zoo, Sam fails to keep up with the rest of the group and gets lost.