1. Adventure
2. Animals
3. Anthropomorphism
4. Design
5. Freedom
6. Friendship
7. Humour
8. Imagination
9. Metafiction
10. Visual literacy
11. Zoos

An anteater, an elephant, a turtle and a flamingo escaped over the wall of City Zoo. With this classic joke setup, the reader is taken on a rollicking chase across an America landscape recognisable from its art and movies. Riddle’s first joke is on the dedication page. With the spindly-legged flamingo giving a boost to the elephant so he can climb over the wall, the absurdity is piled on.

The illustrations are pale grey and cream, like a faded negative of a photograph. The sequence of framed stills suggests a 1920s black-and-white silent Hollywood film—there’s more than one visual reference to Mack Sennett’s Keystone Cops in the zookeepers’ pursuit of the escapees. The text, ‘They were disguised so that no one would notice them’, has the animals in a variety of human costumes, one imitating the iconic photograph of the Beatles crossing Abbey Road. Beyond the slapstick, their survival in the human world is touchingly conveyed by their clothing and poses. The slang of the early twentieth century is used to great effect by Riddle in the caption-like telling of the story—culminating in the picture of when the elephant ‘blew it when he could no longer resist the fountain in town.’

The ridiculous and the poignant collide in the illustration of the anteater in overalls, ‘holding down a regular job’ stopping on his way home transfixed by a taxidermist’s shopfront. The book’s illustration lets the reader see him reading their ominous slogan, ‘You snuff ‘em, We stuff ‘em.’ The flamingo’s mysterious survival on the outside is a final imaginative spree. The first edition of this book reveals a jacket cover flap with an amusing portrait of the author and the three escapees having tea together.

1. Tohby Riddle’s website www.tohby.com
2. Books Illustrated ‘Behind the Studio Door with Tohby Riddle’, 2019 features Tohby Riddle discussing his art https://mailchi.mp/booksillustrated/behind-the-studio-door-patricia-mullins-792081?e=2f40f0668e&fbclid=IwAR3jWxqIGop9Je-LlsbeBuepLpuWasYvMhXJH4iugw0ziJdyqQGgnBcpyHo
3. Tohby Riddle’s ‘Notes on The Great Escape from City Zoo’, 2010 https://tohbyriddle.files.wordpress.com/2018/01/notes_on_thegreat-escapefromcityzoo.pdf
4. Kids’ Book Review 20 May 2009 review by Tania McCartney of ‘The great escape from City Zoo’ http://www.kids-bookreview.com/search?q=The+great+escape+from+City+Zoo%E2%80%99
5. Youtube 2 November 2022 Behind the News, Five Lions Escape Enclosure at Taronga Zoo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MnNPoPBBQg
6. Below are websites revealing some of the cultural influences Tohby Riddle mentions in his ‘Notes on ‘The Great Escape from City Zoo’
7. YouTube 3 August 2020 Keystone Cops Compilation by Dave Glass https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Orde7FtHh0
8. New York Public Library Digital Collections, photographs of the Empire State Building under construction c1931, Photographer Lewis W Hine’s classic photographs inspired Riddle to create the anteater working on a skyscraper https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/search/index?utf8=%E2%9C%93&keywords=empire+state+building+under+construction