Animal Books

Learning about time from a baby chimpanzee

Chimp Math by Ann Whitehead Nagda and Cindy Bickel is a childrens book that doubles as a story for small children and a great learning tool for all kids.  Chimp Math tells the story of Jiggs, a small Chimpanzee who was born at a zoo in Kansas who was taken care by the zoo keepers because her mother did not seem interested in raising Jiggs (sometimes Great Apes do not want to raise their children in zoos, especially first births).

This is a rather short book at 29 pages but is very VERY informative because it not only tells the story of a young chimp who does very human like things, but also teaches the reader about different math related topics.

The book is setup with the story of the chimp Jiggs on the right hand side.  On the left hand side of every page is a different kind of math related topic.  For example, the first page shows a timeline with important Chimpanzee dates in the Twentieth Century.  1932 saw Cheetah the chimp star in the movie Tarzan the Ape Man, 1941 saw Curious George being published and so on.

The next page teaches us about a time lin of a day.  This is used to show how often Jiggs was fed in the early stages of his life, being fed every 2 hours.  On the right side of the page is a big photo of Jiggs only a few days old wearing a diaper, looking as cute as can be with a paragraph under the photo to tell the story.

So as you can see, you can use this book to read a fun story about a young chimpanzee raised by  humans and as the child gets older you can introduce them to different math and time related charts and graphs.

Who should buy this book

If you have kids that are young and you want them to be interested in animals, this is a great book.  Also if you would like your kids to get into helping animals in some form, like to be a future zoo keeper, this book will surely benefit the child because it gives them an early look at important scientific graphs and topics to look out for.  Along with amazingly cute photos of Jiggs, your child will surely want to love all animals and chimpanzees after reading this book!

For further reading, please check out all of the animal books that i have reviewed.  Also please feel free to check out some of my animal pictures that i have taken!