I thought I would enjoy this books. Hey, it was about animals. What's not to like right?
But this book is a little confusing. The Chapters went back and forwards and I often got lost especially when I read about her broken ankle. My thinking when did she break that? like you do. Then a few chapters later she breaks her ankle. Now I'm seriously confused.

That's how I felt this book went. Although I did like the animals.

An entertaining and informative read. At times humorous and somber as the author describes her unorthodox start in her zoo curating career and the adventures that ensued over the years.

Brilliant read, once I started I couldn't put it down. An interesting look at the path Annette took, I would have liked a bit more of the end of her career when she was the actual curator

This is a wonderful book that is highly entertaining. I loved the antics of the animals so richly described by the author. Annette does a wonderful job of giving the animals a voice. I highly recommended this book to everyone that loves animals.

Confessions of an Accidental Zoo Curator was such a surprising and unexpected book that I wasn't sure how I felt about it at first. However, as I continued reading and then continued reflect on everything I read, I realize that this truly is a fascinating, informative book about the development of zoo conservation and education, and more specifically about an incredible woman's life.

Berkovits introduces us to her life and guides us through her many life changes and experiences in an engaging manner with humor, honesty, and graceful writing. Her personality shines through her words, and I was captured by her insightful and detailed storytelling.

I loved Berkovits' passion. I could feel her determination, strength, and love for her family and work with every word she wrote. I felt that this book had a good balance of both her personal family life - from her birth in Kyrgyzstan to details about her family members - and her professional life. Her passion for learning and education is seen at an early age, and I enjoyed reading about her progression to her eventual career. She comes across as a sort of woman who is easy to admire, as she both faced and surpassed many different obstacles ranging from her own personal self-doubt and struggles to issues such as sexism and learning how to work in an unfamiliar environment.

What surprised me the most about Berkovits was the fact that she didn't really have a very animal-heavy childhood, and she didn't really seem to be the extreme animal lover that one expects of anyone involved with zoos. I had expected this book to focus more on the animals themselves, but Berkovits focuses more on the conservation education aspect, which proved to be extremely interesting. Zoo-based wildlife conservation is not something I think about very often, so I really enjoyed learning about this from a woman who has based her life and career around this topic.

There has been a bit of controversy over zoos and some wildlife conservation in recent times, and I think Berkovits does a wonderful job explaining both her and zoo members' goals of protecting, saving, and bringing awareness to others about the purpose of zoos and how they hope to benefit the animals that they care for. Although I did enjoy learning as much as I did, I did think that this book would focus a bit more on the animals themselves, so that was slightly disappointing. Her writing style captures you, but is also a time a bit brief, which left me wanting to hear more about certain aspects of her life.

Overall, I have given Confessions of an Accidental Zoo Curator four stars! If you are at all interested in zoos, wildlife conservation, or if you simply enjoy reading about interesting and successful women, I highly encourage you to check this one out.

This biography briefly covers Annette’s birth in Kyrgyzstan, follows her early years in Poland and Israel before focusing on she became Senior Vice President of the Wildlife Conservation Society in New York City. Her career path took an unexpected turn when she went back to work after the birth of her child. Intrigued by an ad for a non-profit, she applied, and ends up working for the Society at the Bronx Zoo. Unlike many of her colleagues, working with animals was not an instinctive. As education coordinator, she expected to spend time working behind the scenes with people not in the forefront with animals, reptiles, and birds. Her tale of her first day encounter with a snake set the stage. Soon she begins carting animals across the city to the Captain Kangaroo Show and creates the first zoo camps for children. She used innovated techniques she developed to introduce environmental education programs in China. The book highlights thirty years of combining animal conservation with science along with odd animal and human behavior. Throughout, she constantly faced self-doubt, sexism, and antiqued zoological practices. She documents her journey with humor, miscalculations, missteps, and undeniable successes.

This is the author’s second book. The first, “In the Unlikeliest of Places”, is the story of how her father survived the Nazis, Gulags, and Soviet Communism before emigrated first to Israel and then to the United States.

I received this book through Net Galley. Although encouraged as a courtesy to provide feedback to the publisher, I was under no obligation to write a review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

I'm not a big biography reader but I've discovered I like stories that have people explaining their jobs. This book is wonderful. It's well written and easy to read. As Annette Libeskind Berkovits tells the story of her life fleeing Poland to Israel to America and her first experiences with animals you have to smile and admit this is going to be a great read. The history of the Zoo in New York City is fascinating and is inspiring me to visit. Ms. Berkovits contributions to worldwide education into animal preservation and habitat is astounding. A great read for young and old.

Though the topic is an important one, I felt that the writing was very appropriate for younger readers but not my cup of tea. The vignettes left me wanting more: more detail, more follow-up, more personal recollections, and more background about the NY Zoological Society, even about the Bronx.

I might not have picked this one up if I wasn't so fascinated by the ongoing saga of April the giraffe. As I'm typing this, we're still watching and waiting to see if she ever gives birth. Some of the stories, especially one about a giraffe, were interesting. I do wish the author had given more information, either to explain what happened and why, or to let the reader know how a bad situation ended. I was less interested in reading about her son's hermit crabs or the squirrels in her attic.

This was an interesting read in the respect that the book was more about the author's love of educating people rather than her love of animals. Despite this, there were a few entertaining stories about the animals in the Bronx Zoo. I also enjoyed reading about the humans in her life, especially her father. It is a very interesting memoir and well worth reading if you like animals. Thank you Net Galley for my copy. I reviewed on Goodreads.

3.5 Stars

Confessions of an Accidental Zoo Curator presents a series of vignette-like recollections of Annette Libeskund Berkovits's life and work with the Bronx Zoo's Wildlife Consevation Society. While it's clear that Berkovits likes animals, and certainly that she developed ground-breaking conservation education programs, I found the book oddly quite dispassionate about animals and wildlife. As a child, Berkovits was curious but afraid of animals. Her only pet had been a large bullfrog. She certainly doesn't gush about the seemingly few animals that she liked over the course of her many years at the Bronx Zoo. She seems to have enjoyed educating people about animals more than the animals themselves.

The book's shining moments are when she writes about the human animals in her life. She relates with humor and brio stories about her family, her colleagues, and some of the zoo's rather frustrating supporters or travelers. The most poignant chapter for me was the one in which a zookeeper names a baby wallaby, abandoned by its mother, after Berkovits's recently deceased father, Nachman Libeskind, who had, against long odds, survived the Holocaust and Soviet internment in a gulag. (The wallaby survived, too!) The funniest had to be the mynah bird who cursed in Yiddish.

Berkovits's love of family and education is what stuck with me more than a love of wildlife, which felt odd given the subject of the book. However, It's made me want to read her book about her father, In the Unlikliest of Places.

Annette Libeskind Berkovits was born in Kyrgyzstan, raised in Poland, and moved to New York City as a teenager. Raised in a household where pet ownership was simply not going to happen, Berkovits somehow or other rises to an executive management position with the world-renowned Bronx Zoo.

Her animal care career starts with the accidental flushing of her pet tadpole, Bully, during a clandestine cleaning of his sanctuary. As a young adult, she is scared of house cats, but somehow talks herself into a job as an animal educator at the Bronx Zoo. Later, she advances through the management ranks, and assumes responsibility for the Zoo’s many education and worldwide conservation efforts.

This book is her story.


=== The Good Stuff ===

* Berkovits has the gift of the “story-teller”. The book has a light, playful tone to it, but yet it manages to tell its message while being entertaining and rewarding. The author writes with a very informal and irreverent style, and the pages seemed to fly by.

* If you are expecting a hundred amusing anecdotes about zoo animals, you may be disappointed. Sure, there are a number of them in the book, but there is much more to the book. Berkovits’ relates marvelous stories about her adventures, including getting room service on the savannahs of Africa, sweating out the escape of a venomous King Cobra on the grounds of the zoo, and notifying the zoo’s elite patrons of the plans to name individual naked mole rats in their honor, unless further donations are forthcoming.

* Berkovits shares stories of her life that are not directly related to the zoo, but highlight her own moral dilemmas. For example, she spends much of her professional career pleading with subsistence farmers not to recklessly kill endangered species, even if they are damaging their crops and livelihood. But when a family of squirrels or raccoons damages her own personal property, she considers some very drastic measures to remove the pesky rodents. A great story.

* The author is not above poking a little fun at herself, and admitting some of her foibles. Once, when she was very concerned about the zoo’s public relations, she nearly cancelled a scheduled appearance of two animal handlers on a local TV show. While her worst fears did not exactly come to pass, she was certainly made to look foolish.

=== The Not-So-Good Stuff ===

* The author is very careful about the sides of her personal and professional life that she is willing to share. Nothing really bad ever seems to happen at the zoo, the office politics are somewhat muted, and there is very little conflict or unpleasant incidents. The book is more of a “feel-good” set of remembrances than a serious history of the zoo or an autobiography of the author.

* There are a number of “dead-ends” in the story. For example, numerous chapters deal with relations built between the Bronx Zoo and conservation organizations in foreign countries. The author is enthusiastic about these, and claims them as personal and professional triumphs. But none of these are further analyzed to quantify their success.

=== Summary ===

The book is certainly enjoyable, and most anyone who likes human (or animal) interest stories probably walks away with a smile and feeling a bit better about their day. While the stories are mostly on the lighter side, and usually positive in outcome, there is enough material to get a feel for the author’s experiences. And while the perceptive reader could probably tease out a few “life lessons” from the content, the book’s purpose is more to be entertaining…which it does well.

Princess Fuzzypants here:
There has been movement in the past several years to discredit zoos as horrible places that keep animals in awful captivity. Most of the people who subscribe to this position have good intentions. Preservation and protection of fauna and flora ought to be something around which we can all gather. What the well-meaning humans ignore is the important part that good zoos and good curators have striven to accomplish over the years is the conservation of both the animals and where they live.
This book is a fantastic reminder of where zoos have been and what an important role they have played in awakening an awareness of the plights of animals and a place where endangered species can have safe sanctuary. Ms. Berkovitz has been at the forefront of this modernization of zoos and conservation, leading by accessible education that changes hearts and minds. She transformed the Bronx Zoo where she worked for decades and in doing so, she was able to share her knowledge around the world. She and likeminded humans need to be revered just as the animals they try to save should be. Without them it is scary to think what might have happened to the others.
Even today zoos and sanctuaries around the world work to save animals in danger. In Australia, many establishments are providing homes for Tasmanian Devils who are being decimated by a horrible disease in Tasmania. Without these controlled and safe places, we might have lost these creatures forever. They are not kept in cages and mistreated. They live in environments as close to the real thing as possible under the protection of humans who wish them well.
If you love animals and if you want to read a fascinating memoir that is balanced and moving, pick up this book. It might just change your mind about some things.
I give is a resounding five purrs and two enthusiastic paws up.

Zoos have changed greatly since the 1970's with a greater emphasis on education, and bigger better exhibits showing the animals in their natural habitats. Much of this is due to the author of this book. But you wouldn't necessarily know it from reading this delightful book. While she does not make light of her accomplishments, the book puts the emphasis on the animals, events, and people that have made up her career.

I don't know why it is but books by zookeepers and about zoos are always such fun. Although the antics of the animals themselves help, they are well-written by people with great flair for storytelling.

I couldn't put it down!

Really interesting book. Many vignettes that are both funny and informational. Great insight into the life of a Bronx Zoo curator.