Eleven-year-old Ant, stuck in a family that she does not like, copes by pretending that her "real" parents are coming to rescue her, by loving her dog Pistachio, by volunteering at the zoo, and by bending the truth and telling lies.
Mr. Peek, the zookeeper, finding his jacket too small one morning, walks through his domain berating himself for being fat, old, and wrinkled, unwittingly insulting the animals who think he is speaking to them.
Relates the efforts to keep the animals of the Buffalo Zoo alive and fed during the first day of the blizzard of 1977, one of the worst in American history.
Eleven-year-old Whit's zookeeper parents have rarely allowed him to go outside of the Alabama zoo they run, but he stops seeing it as such a cage when he meets "Bird Girl, for whom the place is a refuge from problems at home.
Batty tries to become popular at the zoo by imitating the other animals, but the water is too cold in the penguin pool and the sun too bright in the lion enclosure, and he finally returns to his cave to find everyone trying to be like him by hanging upside down.