The Zoo Animals' Faraway Dream by Kathryn Rose Newey

This is the original, first edition. You can find the second edition which includes a bonus chapter here.

A touching, beautifully written story with a heart-warming cast of zoo characters.

The story makes you laugh and sigh, while also urging you to stop and think about the plight of many zoo animals in our world.

~Sonia Faruqi, author of Project Animal Farm (an award-winning investigation of the truth behind factory farming) and The Oyster Thief (an underwater odyssey).


Have you ever wondered how it feels to be a zoo animal, living in a cage all your life?

If you love reading stories about zoo animals, wildlife, animal rights and nature conservation,you’ll love this heartening and fateful zoo animal adventure tale.


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‘The Zoo Animals’ Faraway Dream’ is a story about living behind bars, told from the perspective of zoo animals.

In this entertaining and sometimes heartbreaking animal story, you’ll be taken into the hearts and minds of a group of animals in an imaginary zoo. You’ll get to know and love Shiro, a bossy meerkat, Kolobe, an enthusiastic warthog, Radati, a wise rat, Ndlovu, a sad elephant, and many others.

The animals’ experiences and antics are both amusing and tragic. Many of them believe life will always be the same, but one day a travelling animal appears. The fact that he doesn’t have a cage shocks and confuses them, and his presence seems to ignite a ‘faraway dream’ in the animals’ minds – is it just wishful thinking or something else? Arguments abound, so some animals decide it’s finally time to take action…

This is a story to save caged animals. This realistic animal story weaves in typical captive animal behaviours, as the zoo animals live out their lives behind bars, while some of their human visitors and keepers are indifferent to the animal cruelty in front of them. As you become absorbed in the story, you’ll be introduced to the concepts of animal rights and liberation, wildlife preservation, endangered species and extinction through the interactions of the animals and humans in the story.

More than a story. You’ll find factual information and website links at the back of the book about the huge numbers of confined animals worldwide, and the suffering of animals held captive in zoos, farms, labs, crates and tanks – with inspiring and practical suggestions on how you can help solve this global tragedy.


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Paperbacks and ebooks are available from most Amazon websites and major online bookstores internationally, such as Barnes & Noble, Booktopia, Foyles, Waterstones, Blackwells, etc.

The Kindle reader app can be downloaded for reading Kindle ebooks on any device (such as PC, Mac, iOS or Android).

Paperback ISBN: 978-1-78926-278-0

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-78926-277-3