A flood has returned to the Earth. This time it’s not a man but a robot who is there to save all the animals and ferry them to a new world. Large, sturdy and able to traverse any distance, watery or not, the robot cares for the animals, feeding bamboo to the pandas and fish to the tigers. But the robot knows it needs more to sustain this world for the animals. The robot builds a large boat for all the animals—a callback to Noah’s Ark—and carries them through vast stormy seas until they find another robot friend to whisk everyone by air to a new island teeming with life and opportunity.
Aaron Becker’s The Last Zookeeper is beautifully drawn with spare pencil lines and watercolor washes, and provides a conversation starter for older children who may be wondering about their role to play in a world that needs everyone’s help in order to survive.
