Zoo Island

Zoo Island

By Tomas Rivera




Summary

This is a story about Jose, a young migrant worker who works the fields with his hands and finds a way not to think about how boring the job is by redirecting his thoughts. He does this by taking a census of the population of the workers that work and live on the land with him. Jose includes his friends, Jitter and Hank in helping him take the census of the population of the people living on this land in their chicken coops. He finds a special sense of self-esteem and importance in having people identify the names of their family’s and how many people are in it. Jose goes on to compare the community of people that he lives with to another community of people. In this comparison he notices the standard of living of the people of the town that he is comparing his community to, is much higher. They have many more public areas (churches, food stores, ect.). He makes note of the fact that his “Pa” feels the people of the other town come in and make fun of his village because of their low standard of living. The census that Jose Hank and Jitter took gave the poor people of the village a sense of power and the understanding that they have more people in their population then did the more-privileged people in the town. They gained a sense of strength in their numbers. In a most interesting conversation with Don Simon, somewhat of a loaner in the group of eighty-eight people he suggested they name their community “Zoo Island” an interesting name because just like a zoo that had a collection of various types of animals, only they were humans not animals, all special in their own way. The naming of the community gave them all a special sense of identity. The entire village of eighty-eight took a proud picture, in front of the sign that named their village- “Zoo Island”.

Theme

The theme of this story is hwo young Jose and his friends realized through taking a census of their village that they and the people of the village had a special identity and qualities. Although they realized they were poor, they still had greater numbers than the more fortunate people living in the town. This made them feel important and powerful; with the naming of th community it caused a common bond among the residents.

Characters

Jose

Hank

Jitter

Don Simon

Response

I found the book most interesting, it showed me how a young man found productivity from his boredom and through his productivity he gained self- esteem and a common bond for the whole village he lived in.

Here is a game of differrent zoo animals in relating to the book "Zoo Island."

MySpace Games

I posted Youtube her so you can search videos about this book or the author.