Good Night, Zoo: A Children's Guide to Humanimal Spaces

“Good Night, Zoo: Human-Animal-City Relations in Children Books.” In Ulrich Gehmann and Martin Reiche (eds.), Virtual and Ideal Worlds Part II (Columbia University Press 2013), pp. 159-175.

SUNY Buffalo Legal Studies Research Paper No. 2014-012

19 Pages Posted: 11 Dec 2013 Last revised: 6 May 2021

See all articles by Irus Braverman

Irus Braverman

University at Buffalo Law School

Date Written: 2013

Abstract

Children’s books interpellate their readers and listeners into a vision of nature in which boundaries and dualities begin to shudder and collapse. Braverman’s essay focuses on Peggy Rathmann’s story Good Night, Gorilla to show how images of city and wilderness, captivity and freedom, home and zoo, and human and nonhuman animality can become fluid, thereby opening up possibilities for other, novel spaces to emerge. This book’s liminal scheme sets up the stage for the surprising hybrids that can occur when species meet.

Keywords: zoo, city, children's fiction, hybrids and chimera, liminality, captive and wild, spaces of utopia and dystopia

Suggested Citation

Braverman, Irus, Good Night, Zoo: A Children's Guide to Humanimal Spaces (2013). “Good Night, Zoo: Human-Animal-City Relations in Children Books.” In Ulrich Gehmann and Martin Reiche (eds.), Virtual and Ideal Worlds Part II (Columbia University Press 2013), pp. 159-175. , SUNY Buffalo Legal Studies Research Paper No. 2014-012, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2365872

Irus Braverman (Contact Author)

University at Buffalo Law School ( email )

School of Law
528 O'Brian Hall
Buffalo, NY 14260-1100
United States
716-645-3030 (Phone)
716-645-2064 (Fax)

HOME PAGE: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~irusb/

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