My Life with the
Chimpanzees (Revised Edition) by
Jane Goodall (Minstrel, 1988/1996 [DogEvals reviewed the 1995 version], 156 pages,
$4.99, ages 8-12, grades 3-7)
What do you really know
about Dr. Jane Goodall, other than she lived with monkeys in Africa? Is she a
Dame, the equivalent of being a knight?
Perhaps your child has
watched a documentary in school or has learned about a program called Roots and
Shoots.
Did you know Jane was a
secretary, that she lived and worked (but didn’t attend) at Oxford, that she
had a hedgehog, that her ‘heart-dog’ in childhood wasn’t even her family’s dog,
that it took her until age 26 to begin her live studies (in real time) with the
chimpanzees in Africa?
Inspirational Book, Inspirational Lady
Told in her own words, My Life with the Chimpanzees takes the young
reader from Jane’s early childhood in Germany and England through to the
present day (or almost present day!). After only a few years in Africa, other
students came to live and work with her and to learn from both Jane and the
chimps, yet she was not without controversy: for being the first woman to live
alone in the African jungle as an ethologist (1960) and for naming her observational chimps rather
than just giving them numbers. She was also the first to observe chimps using
tools.
Divorced and then widowed,
Jane turned her attention to dwindling numbers of wild animals and their
habitats. She also began teaching children worldwide about conservation and
made it fun! Roots and Shoots,
founded in 1991 and now with the Jane Goodall Institute (1977) of Vienna, VA,
helps students of all ages combine love and learning for people, animals and
the environment.
Have fun reading this book.
You may just learn that Jane’s sister shares her birthday (or not) and you will
cherish the story of the orphaned chimp who was ‘adopted’ by a spinster
uncle-chimp.
Read More about it:
Primates is
also a fun book about Jane, Birute Galdikas (orangs in Borneo),
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