By Jeanette Winter
The quiet true story of a girl who loved animals so much she went to the forest and simply sat and watched until the chimps let her in.
It begins with Jane as a small English girl who hides in the henhouse for hours just to see how a hen lays an egg, and follows her all the way to the forests of Gombe in Tanzania, where she watches wild chimpanzees longer and more patiently than anyone had before. Slowly the chimps stop running from her, and she discovers they use tools, something people believed only humans did. Jeanette Winter tells it in short, calm lines and soft, glowing pictures, so the whole book feels like watching alongside her.
It's the gentle heart of a biography unit, the life where the great achievement is simply watching closely and not giving up. For an animal-loving child it's a mirror, and it teaches how real science works: notice, wait, record, and let the truth surprise you. There's nothing to brace for here, which makes it a good breather between the heavier lives on the trail, and a clean model of a scientist child can copy in an afternoon.