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11
SUNDAY
I am still trying to forgive Jules Feiffer for Elliot Loves, a dreary Broadway flop to which I dragged my mom in 1990. But perhaps the multitalented 76-year-old Feiffer has redeemed himself with his recent output of delightful children’s books. His most recent one, A Room With a Zoo, tells the story of a girl named Julie, who begins collecting a menagerie of small animals—including an ailing kitten, a hamster, and “an unresponsive hermit crab”—because her parents won’t let her get a dog until she’s old enough to take care of it. The story resonates because my little brother, the Dolittlest of my siblings, was similarly denied a dog and compensated with his own tragicomic procession of lesser fauna. I recall the mail-order African fighting frogs that had to be kept in separate tanks because of their bellicosity. There was corn snake named Cob, a series of hamsters all named Carrot, and, of course, the crawfish who froze to death on our back porch. OK, Feiffer: A Room With a Zoo may just be sweet enough to acquit for the dramatic dog that was Elliot Loves. Feiffer signs copies of the book at 3 p.m. at Politics and Prose, 5015 Connecticut Ave. NW. Free. (202) 364-1919.