In Anchorage, Alaska, two lonely boys make a connection--a brown bear injured just after his mother sends him out on his own, and a human whose father is a new keeper at the Alaska Zoo and whose mother and sister are still in Minnesota.
The author related his experiences buying and moving into a rundown zoo in the English countryside and trying to rebuild it with his family while taking care of his dying wife and two children.
An alien child's quest to take a photograph of a "mysterious creature known as a human" has an unexpected result when a search through an Earth zoo brings an encounter with a gorilla.