Whittoons

Jane Goodall was to write the preface to a book by Linda Koebner, For Kids Who Love Animals. I was asked to illustrate and faced a challenge of creating a likeness of Jane Goodall. Sketching a legend is a bit intimidating. 

The year was 1991, and I was struggling to make it as a cartoonist. So when Linda made the offer to illustrate a book, I did not think twice. Linda and I had studied vervets on St Kitts in 1971. I had taken a semester off to do research. She joined me to explore the primate population that had lived on the island for a couple of hundred years. Vervets came to St. Kitts either as pets from Africa and sought liberation or jumped ship during the slave trade. 

I knew how dedicated Linda was to conservation and protecting animals. In the late 70’s, she had introduced me to a group of chimps who were themselves in the process of liberation. She was taking individual chimps from labs and planned to introduce them as a new group to an outdoor habitat where they could relish a bit of freedom. And she succeeded. 

The illustrations for the book took months, but it was worth the long hours. I did hope that For Kids Who Love Animals might end up as a fun guide to the animal kingdom, (and that my drawings might stimulate curiosity in young and old. )

Yet it was Linda’s writing, with a little help from Jane Goodall’s preface, that would really capture their interest.