THE TIGER CUBS AND THE CHIMP
The True Story of How Anjana the Chimp Helped Raise Two Baby Tigers
by Bhagavan "Doc" Antle ; Thea Feldman ; photographed by Barry Bland
A chimpanzee cuddles two baby tigers and watches over them as they grow.
Mitra and Shiva are twin brother white tigers. When they were only 3 days old, a big storm separated them from their mother. China, an animal worker at The Institute for Greatly Endangered and Rare Species began taking care of them. She had a special assistant: Anjana the chimp, who also grew up at the animal preserve. After watching China carefully, Anjana steps in and learns how to feed the cubs bottles of warm milk. Anjana also plays with Mitra and Shiva, giving them affection and comfort. When they are scared, she puts her arms around them and says, “Boop, boop, boop”—which apparently means, “I am here with you. You are okay.” Following the same clean photo-album layout as Suryia & Roscoe (2011) (Suryia makes an appearance with Mitra and Shiva too), with simple sentence structure, this is engaging nonfiction for the youngest set. An author’s note explains how the animal-preserve setting fostered this relationship. Since she feels so safe and secure, Anjana is able to overcome her natural fear of predatory animals.
Unusual-friendship tales are not uncommon, but two unexpected, yet endearing, animals hugging will never fail to charm.
(Informational picture book. 4-8)