Zoo Day

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Synopsis

In an effort to get to know his ten-year-old daughter, Maggie, better, Harry Dresden plans a father-daughter outing to the zoo. With a little magical help from their dog, Mouse, the trio are enjoying their time together until Harry senses a malevolent force nearby. Leaving Maggie under Mouse's protection, he goes to check it out, but while he's gone, Maggie must deal with a supernatural force of her own and Mouse takes on the evil entity that's causing all the mayhem.

Review

"Zoo Day" is a a short novelette in the Dresden Files series that's written from three different first-person POVs: Harry's, Maggie's and Mouse's. It takes place after the events of Skin Game and was written exclusively for the Brief Cases anthology in which it's found. Still trying to get to know each other, Harry takes his ten-year-old daughter, Maggie, on a father-daughter outing to the zoo, accompanied by their dog, Mouse. Just as Harry thinks it might be a rare normal day, his spidey-sense starts tingling, picking up on a malevolent force nearby. He doesn't want to leave Maggie, but knowing he needs to check it out, he gets her to a relatively safe spot at the zoo cafe with Mouse standing guard so that he can find out what's happening. While he's dealing with that threat, Maggie is handling one of her own, some creeps who only children can see but that she knows about thanks to a book that the Carpenter children lent her. As she bravely faces her foe, Mouse must stand up against yet another one, a Shadow that looks strangely like himself, and which he quickly learns is the entity responsible for all the mayhem that Mouse's Friend and Girl are dealing with.

"Zoo Day" is a very different sort of story, because it's basically the same narrative told from three different perspectives. I love that Harry and Maggie are spending time together, getting to know each other, but they're still very tentative around one another, worried about what the other might think of them and not wanting to screw it up. Mouse is very perceptive in picking up on this tension and thinks that they're very silly humans. Harry's part in the story, once again, shows his big heart for kids and for helping people in general, not only in his interactions with Maggie, but also in how he handles the "threat." Maggie is such a sweet kid who's been through a lot. She's far more tuned in to the supernatural world than even Harry knows, given that she can see the creeps, entities that are only visible to kids and that adults forget about by the time they're grown. In spite of being terrified of them, she proves to be a very brave little girl. Mouse is the ever-protective and very special Foo dog who loves them both and would do anything for them. He knows, though, that he can't help Harry because he must protect Maggie, but he also can't exactly help Maggie because this is something she has to face on her own or it will keep haunting her. So he does the only thing he can do, which is bravely going after the Shadow that's causing all the problems in the first place. This story has many of the supernatural goings-on that are typical for this series, but at the same time, it's a sweet family story for this trio that I really enjoyed.

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Jim Butcher