Candace Fleming

"The story of Helen Martini's care for lion and tiger cubs, and her emergence as the Bronx Zoo's first woman zookeeper"--

The True Story of the Bronx Zoo's First Woman Zookeeper

Cubs in the Tub

renee badenoch

Cubs in the Tub was charming and cute. It tells the story about Helen Martini, a woman who through cleverness and love for animals, worked her way into being one of the first women to ever work for a zoo in America. After caring for one lion and three tiger cubs at home, she secretly made an unused storage room at the Bronx Zoo into an animal nursery that she could continue to care for motherless animals in. When found out by zoo officials, they saw the good work she had been doing and created a position for her! Fleming's authors note gives a little insight into how women of the time often used unorthodox ways to carve out positions for themselves within existing power structures. 

I would have appreciated a bit more textual correction against some of the practices that were done at the time. While Helen did the best she could with the knowledge she had, many of the practices she utilized to care for the animals were simply not healthy or safe, and it made my little zoological heart squirm to read about them. If the author didn't feel like they could fit relevantly into the text, I wish some more science about care of wild animals, and the path to reintigration into zoos or wild settings had been included in the back matter. Otherwise a very solid book.

Cubs in the Tub The True Story of the Bronx Zoo's First Woman Zookeeper

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