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Cover of The Last Zoo

The Last Zoo

Pia lives in a zoo in the middle of the Pacific Ocean with her parents (both ghosts), several old and cranky genies, a devil, and two young angels. She spends her days trimming genie-beards, trying to avoid being tricked into selling her soul, and waiting for the angels to make a miracle big enough to save the world.

Then the angels go missing… and everything around Pia seems to be ending: her friendships, her childhood, and maybe even the world itself.

Buy the book Read: making up monsters ↓

“Poignant, strange, and featuring an extraordinary cast of creatures, from Smellephants to Faberge chickens.”Guardian

“Mind-stretching, moving and explosive.”Times Literary Supplement

“Funny and fantastical.”The Week Junior

“It’s a no from me, Jeff.”My mate Gethin

Making up Monsters

Storytellers are good at making up monsters. Space monsters, sea monsters, monsters under the bed – you name it. It’s like this special talent our imaginations have when we’re faced with the great big unknown.

An old hand-coloured engraving of a huge green sea monster spouting water beside sailing ships — Yarr! I terrify sailors with my enormous jaws and frankly preposterous nostril hair!

I like that we’re good at monster-making. I think we do it because stories are about bringing things to life. You know, like those mad scientists that crank down the electricity handle and yell out IT’S ALIVE, IGOR whilst cackling madly. That’s basically me at my laptop when I’m coming up with a new book idea.

A wild-haired mad scientist in black and white, eyes wide, mouth open mid-shout — It is unclear whether this mad scientist is:
A) creating an abominable and godforsaken form of life
B) listening to The Greatest Showman soundtrack on max volume

The Last Zoo is a story all about monster making. It’s got flying pigs in it, and spiders the size of jeeps, and time-travelling frogs, and very materialistic dragons (they all about the bling).

But I guess it’s also about people, too. Because the thing is, every made-up monster has a bit of its maker in it. And one of the things we’re all finding out is that in real life it isn’t just monsters who rampage and destroy. It’s us.

So I thought I’d write a story about that.

(Also, I threw in a unicorn who poops glitter. Gotta give the people what they want, after all.)

If you like, you can read an extract of The Last Zoo here, or you can check out the poem I wrote below, which is all about animal making, and how precious animals actually are.

Enjoy!

Listen to the poemMASSIVE, MASSIVE CHICKENS

Read by Sam · 49 seconds

Read an extract

[Megabunny Warren]

Flopsy munches at the new tunnel, grinding her teeth-chisels against the rockface. In the deep-black of the warren, Donna listens to the splinter and crack of stone. Megabunnies are virtually blind, but Donna keeps her headlamp off. Any light will only confuse Flopsy, making her think she has reached the surface, though that is impossible. They are almost sixty metres below the ground.

Donna doesn’t mind the dark, though. The dark is always full of digging noises, enormous bustling furry bodies, snuffling and warmth.

Even better, you can’t fill out Siskin’s procedure reports if you can’t actually see them.

Not everyone sees the positives, though. Most zookeepers outright refuse assignments to the megabunny warrens. They fake claustrophobia, fear of the dark, deficiencies in vitamin D. The real reason, of course, is that the warrens are located near the island: megabunnies are the only voilà in the zoo that cannot, for obvious reasons, be on an ark. Not an ark that has any hopes of floating, anyway. Megabunnies can grind a hole through anything. Even a ship’s hull.

Donna doesn’t even mind being on land, either. The warrens are on the little archipelago of islands that hold the Rek. In terms of distance, they aren’t much closer to the Seam than some of the arks. And if anything does happen, Donna has Houdini, her own personal genie that she carries in an ancient iPod on a chain around her neck, to zephyr her to safety.

Flopsy chisels off another rock chunk, then uses the sledger-teeth at the back of her mouth to gravel it up until it is small enough to gulp down. Behind her, her littler megabunnies scurry. Donna feels their noses poke her. They are more like trunks, really: very long and bendy, with three nostrils megabunnies use as crude fingers to grip and pinch.

Donna shoos them. ‘Go help your mama.’ The furry bodies bound away, though one of the littlers – probably Bugs, the naughtiest – continues to poke Donna. She gives his nostril a flick and he sneezes and goes to join the others.

As an almost full-grown megamama (Donna came up with that term and now it is part of the zoo’s official classification system), Flopsy’s shaggy bulk fills almost the whole tunnel, which means she can’t turn around and clear the rubble herself. Megabunnies work as a family unit to clear tunnels, which is why they are constantly having littlers. Baby megabunnies are born with flat paws as big as shovels, to scoop and carry the rocks back up to the surface. No littlers means no one to carry away the rubble that Flopsy chisels, grinds up, swallows, and then finally poops out behind her.

As Donna is fond of telling everyone, especially Seamers, human children don’t know how good they have it. Megabunny kids have to clean up their parents’ poop.

Flopsy stops chiselling. Perhaps she’s reached a granite stratum, or maybe broken through into another part of the warren. It happens sometimes. There are four families now – Flopsy’s, Peter’s, Thumper’s and Briar’s – and there is always some criss-crossing.

The littlers have gone very quiet.

And it is suddenly cold. Donna shivers as a breeze comes down the tunnel. She reaches up and switches her headlamp on, knowing something is wrong, horribly wrong. The beam lights up the empty tunnel. Flopsy, Bugs, the whole family: all of them are gone.

Donna rubs the lamp at her neck with a shaking hand, but Houdini has vanished along with the megabunnies, and she is alone.

It’s just her, underground, in the darkness.

What happened to the megabunnies?Buy the book