Zoom is a cat who loves water and dreams of the sea. One afternoon he finds a diary in the attic, inscribed, "To Zoom from Uncle Roy". On the last page is an address and a map: The Sea and How to Get There.

Zoom follows the instructions to Maria's house. When he tells Maria that he is Captain Roy's nephew, she invites him in, turns an enormous wheel, and the sea comes tumbling in.

Zoom dances on the deck of his home-made raft, calling, "More waves," or "More sun," or "More fish." Then he sits and lets the tide carry him back. Maria gives him tea. At the end of the day, he thanks her and asks if he can come back.

Zoom Away
Uncle Roy is in the High Arctic and Maria hasn’t heard from him in months. She’s off to the North Pole to search for him, and asks Zoom to come along.

Zoom has never been upstairs at Maria’s before. The way is cold, and very steep. They pass windows prickly with ice and halls carpeted with snow. Finally they come to a narrow room with a very small doorway, too small for Maria. "I’ll have to find a different way," she says. "I’ll meet you on the other side."

Zoom travels through a long tunnel into the bright Arctic sun. Birds laugh and seals clap as he skates round and round on the Arctic sea. Then, tired, he climbs to the top of a frozen hill, looks through his spy glass and sees Uncle Roy’s boat, The Catship, stuck in the ice.

In the galley, he finds a note: Uncle Roy and his crew have boarded a passing iceberg and are heading south. Zoom is sad; he’d hoped to see his uncle. Then he hears Maria calling him. Maria carries him home and he wakes up in front of her fireplace, dreaming about travelling to rescue The Catship once the ice melts. He hopes it won’t be too long.

Zoom Upstream
It’s fall, and Zoom is napping in Maria’s garden when she answers an urgent phone call from Uncle Roy. Zoom wakes up and follows her muddy footprints to the library. He goes through a bookshelf and down a staircase of books. There he finds a dark river, climbs aboard a dusty old crate, and floats on the current all the way to a stone dock in Egypt.

In a room crawling with pictures of cats, Zoom meets mysterious cloth covered cat-like shapes: mummies. But one of them isn’t a cat. It’s Maria. With his pruning shears, Zoom cuts the mummy open, and together he and Maria follow a trail of Uncle Roy’s silver buttons out of the tomb onto a pier where a row boat awaits them.

Maria rows out on the wide black river to a clipper ship under a crescent moon. It’s Uncle Roy’s Catship. Zoom’s long-lost uncle welcomes them aboard. They have quite the trip ahead of them, upstream, to search for the source of the Nile. They all sail off into the gentle Egyptian night.

From the Zoom books: Zoom at Sea, Zoom Away & Zoom Upstream, by Tim Wynne-Jones, illustrations by Eric Beddows.