Primates: The Fearless Science of Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, and Birut? Galdikas Author: Jim Ottaviani | Language: English | ISBN:
B00D6KLWD0 | Format: PDF
Primates: The Fearless Science of Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, and Birut? Galdikas Description
Jim Ottaviani returns with an action-packed account of the three greatest primatologists of the last century: Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, and Biruté Galdikas. These three ground-breaking researchers were all students of the great Louis Leakey, and each made profound contributions to primatology—and to our own understanding of ourselves.
Tackling Goodall, Fossey, and Galdikas in turn, and covering the highlights of their respective careers, Primates is an accessible, entertaining, and informative look at the field of primatology and at the lives of three of the most remarkable women scientists of the twentieth century. Thanks to the charming and inviting illustrations by Maris Wicks, this is a nonfiction graphic novel with broad appeal.
- File Size: 160486 KB
- Print Length: 144 pages
- Publisher: First Second (June 11, 2013)
- Sold by: Macmillan
- Language: English
- ASIN: B00D6KLWD0
- Text-to-Speech: Not enabled
X-Ray:
- Lending: Not Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #401,091 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #40
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Teen & Young Adult > Education & Reference > Science & Technology > Science & Nature
- #40
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Teen & Young Adult > Education & Reference > Science & Technology > Science & Nature
Having just read Endangered by Eliot Schrefer, it seemed fortuitous that I would wander into a local bookstore to find this little gem facing out at me from a shelf in the children's department. Primates: The Fearless Science of Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, and Birute Galdikas is a graphic, slightly fictionalized history of the three women who started with Louis Leakey and transformed the world's knowledge of the great apes.
Jane Goodall is probably the most well known of these three women, and she was the first woman Leakey was successful in sending to study the great apes. When his former secretary wasn't successful with the chimpanzees (or terribly interested), Goodall, a woman with no formal degree or experience in conducting such a study, was sent. It was there that she conducted some of the most groundbreaking research ever done on the chimpanzees.
Dian Fossey didn't wait for Leakey to discover her, she hunted him down and demanded to be sent to study the mountain gorillas. Leakey, still convinced women are better at this kind of research, put her study together and sent her. It was there that the gorillas became the life and death of Dian Fossey. Her refusal to back down from dangerous people's protection of the poaching of the gorillas was her undoing, but even in death, she is a champion for these beautiful animals.
Birute Galdikas is the least known of these three women. Having come to Leakey after Fossey and Goodall, she was most interested in the illusive orangutans. Lucky for these creatures, their ability to fade into the mist also made them difficult to hunt, which was a protection in and of itself. Galdikas herself was as illusive as her orangutans, but the research she gathered is still unmatched.
Honestly, it was an OK book. I did not feel that it was anything spectacular. Nothing new was brought to the table, but as a summary of the lives of three impressive women, it was moderately successful. I say moderately, since each individual was given roughly 40 pages of a graphic novel to tell who they were, how they got there, how they first adapted in the jungle, one or two of their revelations, and an aftermath of sorts. Frankly, 40 pages of a graphic novel to cram all that information is not enough and does not do their stories justice. And a good portion of that 40 page summary was used for transitions to connect the stories and talk about how they got the job; Which I approve of since there is nothing worse than a choppy story, but therefore meant that there was even less content in the book itself. It was a good simple summary and I liked how the stories were connected, but I just can not help but wish it was longer so that I could learn more about the primates, their work with the primates and what they pioneered! Sadly, the majority of this book was set outside of the jungle.
I believe that this book is meant to be directed for a younger audience because this book is very short (I read it in roughly an hour), the reading level was low, and I found the book to not be as descriptive/informative as I thought it should be. They had to cut out many scenes to squeeze each biography in 40 pages, and did not have the opportunity to go into much detail as to what these brilliant women actually pioneered.
My biggest quirk was probably how often they alluded to their boss's unfaithfulness with his wife. The author is extremely limited in space for the novel, and each page and panel is crucial.
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