The Gerbil Farmer's Daughter
Author: Robinson, Holly
ISBN: 9780307337467
Publisher: RANDOM HOUSE US
Year first published: 15 Jul 2010
Pages: 304
Format: Paperback / softback
Told with heartbreaking honesty and a keen sense of humor, a poignant family memoir of an unusual childhood growing up in the shadow of an ambitious, eccentric father, in the vein of memoirs like Robinson's Look Me in the Eye, Walls's The Glass Castle, and Trussoni's Falling Through the Earth.
"What kind of Navy officer sits on his ship in the middle of the Mediterranean dreaming of gerbils?"
That's the question that Holly Robinson sets out to answer in this warm and rollicking memoir of life with her father, the world's most famous gerbil czar.
Starting with a few pairs of gerbils housed for curiosity's sake in the family's garage, Donald Robinson's obsession with the "pocket kangaroo" developed into a lifelong passion and second career. Soon the Annapolis-trained Navy commander was breeding gerbils and writing about them for publications ranging from the ever-bouncy Highlights for Children to the erudite Science News. To support his burgeoning business, the family eventually settled on a remote hundred-acre farm with horses, sheep, pygmy goats, peacocks-and nearly nine thousand gerbils.
From part-time model for her father's bestselling pet book, How to Raise and Train Pet Gerbils, to full-time employee in the gerbil empire's complex of prefab Sears buildings, Holly was an enthusiastic if often exasperated companion on her father's quest to breed the perfect gerbil. Told with heart, humor, and affection, The Gerbil Farmer's Daughter is Holly's ode to a weird and wonderful upbringing and her truly one-of-a-kind father.
ISBN: 9780307337467
Publisher: RANDOM HOUSE US
Year first published: 15 Jul 2010
Pages: 304
Format: Paperback / softback
Told with heartbreaking honesty and a keen sense of humor, a poignant family memoir of an unusual childhood growing up in the shadow of an ambitious, eccentric father, in the vein of memoirs like Robinson's Look Me in the Eye, Walls's The Glass Castle, and Trussoni's Falling Through the Earth.
"What kind of Navy officer sits on his ship in the middle of the Mediterranean dreaming of gerbils?"
That's the question that Holly Robinson sets out to answer in this warm and rollicking memoir of life with her father, the world's most famous gerbil czar.
Starting with a few pairs of gerbils housed for curiosity's sake in the family's garage, Donald Robinson's obsession with the "pocket kangaroo" developed into a lifelong passion and second career. Soon the Annapolis-trained Navy commander was breeding gerbils and writing about them for publications ranging from the ever-bouncy Highlights for Children to the erudite Science News. To support his burgeoning business, the family eventually settled on a remote hundred-acre farm with horses, sheep, pygmy goats, peacocks-and nearly nine thousand gerbils.
From part-time model for her father's bestselling pet book, How to Raise and Train Pet Gerbils, to full-time employee in the gerbil empire's complex of prefab Sears buildings, Holly was an enthusiastic if often exasperated companion on her father's quest to breed the perfect gerbil. Told with heart, humor, and affection, The Gerbil Farmer's Daughter is Holly's ode to a weird and wonderful upbringing and her truly one-of-a-kind father.
