Animal Crackers - Hannah Tinti

This is the thrid collection of animal stories I've read in the past 12 months. What is it about animals that brings out the beast in people?

I loved these stories and it takes a lot to impress me these days.

Each story in this collection is full of stories. They sparkle. In the first story, Animal Crackers, the narrator is washing an elephant in the zoo. He is thinking about the other people he works with. The ticket collector who has been saved from alien abduction by her cat, Sandy who is attractive from the right (her left side has been eaten by a gorilla), the zoo owner who was attacked by a polar bear as a child. (And if that doesn't grab Mr Pack's interest then I don't know what will.)

Other stories are about a group of giraffes who fake their own suicide, a boy who believes his rabbit can fly (that one is so horrible it is almost unreadable - when he throws it out the window and lands on the lawnmower. But great too.), a woman painting a natural history museum in which the stuffed brown bear comes to life.

This was a real find for me. I'm jealous and in love at the same time.