Ham, the astrochimp

Gr 3-5-This oversize picture-book biography stars the first chimpanzee to orbit the Earth during the final testing phase of the Mercury space program. Large acrylic paintings trace "Ham" from his early days in equatorial Africa through his NASA training, his space flight, his long exile in the National Zoo, and his final two years at the North Carolina Zoological Park. The relatively simple text is accompanied by sidebars with more detailed data on such topics as chimp physiology, the "Space Race," and the hardware of the Mercury program. Glossed over is the fact that Ham was captured and forcibly removed from his family ("When he was old enough to leave his mother-") and nowhere is his "smiling" face after splashdown identified as a chimp expression of fear/anxiety. A brief mention of the ethics of test animals appears in a sidebar. However, this book does provide the younger set with a narrow window into the beginnings of America's space program.-Patricia Manning, formerly at Eastchester Public Library, NY (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Paying tribute to the "first truly intelligent being" in space, Hilliard traces the flight and later life of the chimpanzee sent aloft in a Mercury capsule in 1961. Expanding on his main narrative with longer comments in running sidebars, the author emphasizes Ham's intelligence and good nature throughout, and adds an element of drama to the tale, as Ham's capsule nearly sank before it could be hauled out of the ocean. The stodgy but accurately detailed paintings alternate between views of the capsule and close-up shots of the smiling chimp. As a way of sparking interest in the space race's early days, this makes a more triumphant episode to highlight than the U.S.'s early failures chronicled in Heather Feldman's Sputnik, the First Satellite (2003) or the tragic events of Nick Abadzis's graphic treatment of the Soviet mission, Laika (September 2007). (Picture book/nonfiction. 7-9) Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.