1 - Zamba by Ralph Helfer

I haven't blogged in three and a half years.  I apparently stopped when I got pregnant with my daughter and haven't been back.  Sadly, I also pretty much stopped reading around that time.  I mean, I read to G, even before she was born, and I read stuff online occasionally.  But mostly I stopped reading books.  Which does not mean I stopped buying them or receiving them as gifts.

So, I recently left my job and I have more time at home.  I want G to see me as the voracious reader I have always been.  Some of my best memories of my elementary and middle school years are of curling up with a book, often next to my mom, who is also a reader.

I don't know if I'll make it to 100 books this year.  The main purpose of this blog is just to keep track of what I've read and how I felt about it.

Zamba: The True Story of the Greatest Lion That Ever Lived by Ralph Helfer was an incredible book.  I've been cultivating an appreciation for well-written nonfiction as I've gotten older, and this was beautiful.  It's the story of a man, Ralph, who worked to train exotic animals (lions, Bengal tigers, alligators, chimpanzees, elephants, and so many more) for Hollywood.  He pioneered a new way of training called affection training, in which animals are never cruelly beaten, contained, or starved.  He raised Zamba the African lion from a tiny cub and had eighteen years of astonishing adventures with him.

I discovered this book in the spring of 2010 when I taught an excerpt from it to my class of sixth graders.  I vividly remember thinking that this was a book I wanted to read.  I immediately added it to my ongoing Amazon wish list and it turned up as a gift at some point.  Then it sat on the shelves for years, just waiting to be read.  I'm so glad I picked it to start 2015.

In the book, Helfer casually name-drops some of Hollywood's biggest stars from the 1960's and 1970's.  My favorites were Elvis Presley and Mae West, but the list was huge.  Helfer worked tirelessly for decades to create a reputation as the best and most reliable animal trainer in the business.  He changed the way animals were treated in Hollywood, and Zamba was his biggest success.  He raised his daughter alongside Zamba and tells of them curling up with a bowl of popcorn to watch cartoons after dinner.  Not many parents would trust their child around a fully grown male African lion, and not many lions would be worthy of the trust.

The excerpt I taught turned out to be one of the very last chapters of the book.  From there to the end, my throat was full and my eyes were teary.  Zamba was certainly a special lion, and this is a special book.

Page count: 258
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