Little Larry Goes to School: The True Story of a Timid Chimpanzee Who Learned To Reach New Heights

K-Gr 2—In the forest school of an African sanctuary for chimpanzees lives Little Larry, a young orphan. Just like human children, Little Larry has to pick up many skills to develop into a healthy and well-adapted adult. At school, Little Larry is learning to socialize and bond with his peers, to groom himself, to stay safe, to find food, and, most important, to climb trees. Though climbing trees seems so natural to apes, it's a challenge for Little Larry. Readers will be touched by poignant close-up images that capture Little Larry's personality, environment, and relationship with the other chimpanzees. The narrative, which chronicles Little Larry's life from his birth to his graduation from forest school, is rendered in a comfortably large white font that moves around full-page tertiary color backgrounds. This dynamic design combines multicolor pages with expressive photography that will inform readers about chimpanzees living in sanctuaries and the role of human caregivers. The book contains a map indicating the location of the sanctuary and facts about chimps' facial expressions and sounds.