The Fearless Science of Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, and Biruté Galdikas
by Jim Ottaviani, Illustrated by Maris Wicks
2 stars
I really wanted to love this book. The illustrations are great, often working in details that aren’t touched on in the text. I love the focus on women in science and their extraordinary passion.
However, on the whole I found the execution confusing. The shifts in narration were hard to keep track of. Though the changes in font helped, at times it was difficult to parse out which font went with which character.
There is way too much packed into this book. This slim volume tries to cram in the origins and professional accomplishments of three women and how they changed the field. It is often vague, complicated further by the fact it is partially fictionalized without noting what is fiction. I spent much of my time while reading looking up details to determined what was real. The text left many questions unanswered such as what Biruté Galdikas sat on to make her sick (caustic sap) and why Dian Fossey needed an oxygen tank to hike (emphysema). The details in the illustrations were great, but were made confusing without further explanation in the text.
It also hasn’t aged particularly well. Because it presents events in real people’s lives, often from their own perspectives, it doesn’t really add any commentary. So when Louis Leakey is being a creep, it’s presented as normal. His advances and unwanted attention are seen as just part of the process. While true to the reality of the events, it felt a little icky to not at least have a line condoning that behavior.
Because it’s a children’s book, many things are simplified or glossed over, particularly the Dian Fossey section. It does not detail how she died or her approach to dealing with poachers aside from destroying their camps. This makes sense for the audience, but the presentation felt incomplete, ignoring the controversies of her life and only presenting the positive.
While reading this prompted me to look further into each of these women’s lives, the book itself didn’t really add to the conversation aside from Maris Wicks’ splendid artwork. Perhaps a good fit for a graphic-novel-lover to spark their interest in science, women in science, and primates, but on it’s own, I didn’t find this one particularly successful.