THE WATCHER
Jane Goodall’s Life with the Chimps
By Jeanette Winter
Schwartz & Wade. $17.99. Ages 4-8
Inspired by animals and the fictional heroes who communed with them, Jane Goodall got herself from the English countryside to a remote African forest in her early 20s and found her calling. Like Dr. Dolittle, she talked to the animals, but mostly she observed them. In “The Watcher,” author-illustrator Jeannette Winter manages to convey Goodall’s story and much about the chimpanzees of Gombe that she has worked hard to save from extinction. Concisely told and charmingly illustrated, the picture book begins with 5-year-old Jane waiting to witness how a hen lays an egg. Winter then focuses on Goodall’s patience in getting to know the chimpanzees. At first, Goodall heard their calls but couldn’t see them. Winter’s gorgeous acrylic-paint-and-ink scenes of the forests start out featuring chimps peeking from behind trees and sleeping in nests made in high branches, but after one distinguished-looking chimp approaches Goodall and takes bananas from her hand, other chimps allow her to be near them and study them. The double-page spread showing a forest being cut down and a chimp and baby being aimed at with a gun is not exactly realistic — Winter’s images are too simple and geometrical for that — but it starkly captures the threats to chimps that Goodall has tried to bring to the world’s attention. The book’s last scenes show Goodall back at Gombe, where she is inspired and enlightened anew by her favorite animals.
— Abby McGanney Nolan
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