Between the time the crowds leave the zoo and the zookeeper makes her rounds, the animals come out for a rousing game of basketball.

After the zoo closes, monkey slips out of his cage to explore the zoo, introducing the reader to the other animals and the idea of opposites.

"The fragile, 1952 postwar tranquility of a five-year-old boy's world explodes one summer day when a leopard escapes from the zoo, throwing all of Oklahoma City into dangerous excitement, in this evocative story of a child's confrontation with his deepest fears. For Grady McClarty, an ever-watchful but bewildered five-year-old boy, World War II is only a troubling, ungraspable event that occurred before he was born. But he feels its effects all around...