Review by New York Times Review
The stories of scientists create new scientists. Alexander von Humboldt - the most famous naturalist of the early 19th century - chronicled his epic expeditions, between 1799 and 1804, in his "Personal Narrative of a Journey to the Equinoctial Regions of the New Continent." When a nature-loving student at Cambridge named Charles Darwin read the book, it changed his life. He read passages aloud to his professors and learned Spanish so that he could follow in Humboldt's footsteps. Humboldt's "Personal Narrative," Darwin later wrote, "stirred up in me a burning zeal to add even the most humble contribution to the noble structure of Natural Science." At age 22, he embarked on his own voyage around the world, out of which he would develop his theory of evolution. For a long time, such life-changing stories were mostly the stories of men. Biology has changed since the days of Humboldt and Darwin in that respect: today, the majority of Ph.D.'s awarded in biology in the United States go to women. Women regularly head out to sea or into jungles to make new discoveries. They return with their own stories, which can inspire girls and boys alike. And no women have more gripping stories than Dian Fossey, Biruté Galdikas and Jane Goodall, who in their respective ways profoundly changed our understanding of the great apes. The lives of these three women were intertwined, thanks to the patronage they all gained from the Kenyan paleoanthropologist Louis Leakey. To understand the origin of our species, Leakey decided, fossils were not enough. He saw a need for long-term observations of living apes. And women, Leakey was convinced, would be better observers of their behavior than men. When the young Goodall sought out Leakey in 1957, he dispatched her to observe chimpanzees in Tanzania. In later years, Fossey went to Zaire (now Democratic Republic of Congo) and Rwanda to study mountain gorillas, and Galdikas established a camp in Borneo to study orangutans. They created the first carefully observed pictures of their apes of choice. Goodall discovered that chimpanzees make tools and fight in warlike conflicts with one another. Fossey found that gorillas were a far cry from King Kong, living peacefully for the most part in stable groups. Galdikas explored the solitary lives of orangutans, which often wander through the Borneo canopy alone. All three primatologists became globally famous, and they used this fame to draw attention to the precarious state of their apes. In "Primates," Jim Ottaviani and Maris Wicks present the stories of Fossey, Goodall, and Galdikas in a graphic novel that draws heavily from the scientists' lives and work. Ottaviani's most popular book is "Feynman," his splendid best-selling graphic novel about the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman. As a three-person biography, "Primates" is inevitably more complex. To help the reader navigate the jump-cuts, Ottaviani and Wicks use different fonts to narrate each woman's story. Despite the inherent challenges, they succeed in conjuring the feel of extraordinary science. And they do so not by manufacturing fake emotion, but by sticking to the reality of being a scientist - the hard punishments of fieldwork, the strains on marriage, the cocktail-party diplomacy back home and, most important of all, the elation of discovery. Especially in its portrayal of this final element, "Primates" is the kind of book that can produce new scientists. There are lots of things aspiring primatologists will need to know that they won't find in "Primates," however. Primatology is no longer descriptive natural history; it's about testing hypotheses about ecology and behavior, aided by statistics, mathematical models, genetics and neuroscience. Gone is Leakey's magic wand, replaced by dwindling research grants and jobs, which are fought over by a growing pool of underemployed Ph.D.'s. And despite the efforts of Fossey, Galdikas and Goodall, apes are hurtling toward extinction in the wild. Their forests are being logged and converted to plantations. Gorillas are dying from Ebola. Chimpanzees are hunted for food or as illegal pets. To study apes today is not to discover them for the first time, but perhaps to say farewell.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [May 31, 2013]
Review by Booklist Review
Ottaviani's latest, after Feynman (2011), manages to compress the fascinating stories of three groundbreaking scientists Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, and Birute Galdikas into a slim volume without skimping on their rich characters and joyful discoveries. Thanks to Wicks' colorful, lively, Herge-like art, each scientist (and primate) has a distinct personality, but it's the depictions of the animals emerging from lush, leafy backgrounds or lolling in trees that steal the show. A chimp mugs to the viewer with a boastful, precocious grin, for instance, after Goodall observes it using a tool to forage for food. For all the playful mugging and gratifying discoveries, though, Ottaviani doesn't shy away from the struggles of living and working in the bush. Presented as dedicated, iconoclastic, and profoundly in awe of the creatures around them, Goodall, Fossey, and Galdikas are inspiring figures, and Ottaviani does a first-rate job of dangling enough tantalizing tidbits to pique readers' interest in the topic. The actual science is a bit light, but an author's note strongly encourages further reading and includes resources.--Hunter, Sarah Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Ottaviani(Feynman) examines the lives and scientific work of the three great primatologists of the 1960s, as they intersect through mutual mentor Louis Leakey. The book begins with a young Goodall, who is fascinated by Tarzan (and is jealous of "the other Jane"), as she's drawn into research by Leakey, who believes that women make better researchers than men due to their observational skills . Fossey and Galdikas have similar stories, studying gorillas and orangutans respectively. The women make groundbreaking discoveries in primatology, forever changing scientists' views of humans' closest relatives while battling obstacles-from poachers to government obstruction. Ottaviani succeeds in capturing their hard work and the thrilling breakthroughs during years of research, without looking away from some of the darker details, such as Leakey's womanizing. Wicks's cartoony illustrations are a great match for the story; they never get bogged down with unnecessary details and briskly move forward the account of the women and their subjects. A riveting, jargon-free overview of one of the great stories of animal research. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by School Library Journal Review
Gr 7 Up-Ottaviani chronicles the careers of Goodall, Fossey, and Galdikas as they respectively observe chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans in the wild. Each woman's narration has a distinct voice, but the power of the story is the legacy they establish together. Wicks's drawings feature a humorous touch as she creates both spectacle and detail through a deceptively simple cartoon style. © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Horn Book Review
A graphic format admirably propels this lightly fictionalized group biography of "Leakey's Angels": Jane Goodall (chimps in Tanzania), Dian Fossey (gorillas in Rwanda), and Birute Galdikas (orangutans in Borneo). The book proceeds chronologically, starting with Goodall's childhood, her meeting with anthropologist Louis Leakey, and her early work in Gombe, and then braiding in the accounts of Fossey and Galdikas as Leakey recruited them. In a neat division of labor, the scientists (occasionally including Leakey) themselves narrate the story in captions that can be read continuously, with color and font indicating who's narrating, while speech balloons and the small, tidy comic illustrations take readers to each present moment. While Fossey tells us about "the one [Alan Root] who taught me how to track gorillas," the accompanying sequence of twelve panels shows us just how initially hopeless she was at the task. The tone is lively but respectful, with a moving account of Fossey's difficulties and death: "Most people just didn't understand her," writes Jane. "Very few people tried." The afterword is an interesting note about separating fact from fiction: "So, can you trust what I wrote, or what Maris drew? Well, yes...mostly." roger sutton (c) Copyright 2013. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Veteran science writer Ottaviani (Feynman, 2011, etc.) teams up with illustration newcomer Wicks in this semifictionalized overview of the "Trimates," three women primatologists championed by Louis Leakey. The book opens with Goodall's cozy first-person account of her childhood dreams of studying animals in Africa, her recruitment by Leakey, the establishment of her long-term chimpanzee study in Nigeria and her key discoveries regarding chimpanzee behavior. The narrative then shifts from Goodall to Leakey's other protges, Fossey and Galdikas, and their influential research on, respectively, gorillas and orangutans. Fossey and Galdikas also tell their own tales in distinct, often funny, voices. Wicks' cheerful drawings complement the women's stories by highlighting their humorous moments. However, the simplicity of Wicks' rounded figures and flat backgrounds make the panels documenting primate behavior less effective than they could be. Another weakness is the text's tendency to summarize when more scientific and biographical detail would be welcome. For example, the final chapter covers the later stages of the Trimates' careers but only briefly addresses the circumstances surrounding Fossey's death. Readers looking for more substantial biographies or science should seek out other sources after whetting their appetites here. More story than study, the book provides an accessible introduction to Goodall's, Fossey's and Galdikas' lives and work. (afterword, bibliography) (Graphic novel. 10-14)]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
