We see young Jane set up camp in Gombe, at last feeling a deep sense of homecoming - “This is where I belong,” she would later write in her memoir.

Doolittle as she aspired to go to Africa and live with the apes, to the realization of her dream as she buys a one-way boat ticket to Kenya upon graduation and soon meets the pioneering paleoanthropologist and archaeologist Louis Leakey, the story captures in plain words and simple drawings Goodall’s remarkable determination, tenacity and clarity of conviction. How refreshing, then, to come upon The Watcher: Jane Goodall’s Life with the Chimps ( public library | IndieBound) by writer and artist Jeanette Winter - the illustrated story of how the legendary primatologist, who once authored a little-known children’s book herself, became the icon that she is and forever changed not only her field but also the course of cultural attitudes toward animals.įrom cultivating the powers of observation as a little girl, obsessively tracking the family’s hens as they lay eggs and quietly watching the robin outside her window for weeks on end, to reading voraciously the stories of Tarzan and Dr. Great children’s books celebrating science are few and far between, and in a general publishing landscape where only 31% of books for young readers feature female protagonists, great children’s books celebrating female pioneers of science are especially rare.

The Watcher by Jeanette Winter