• Age: 9 to 12
• Grade: 4 to 7
• Reading age: 9 to 12

Let's meet the great ape family!

Get to know our charismatic chimpanzee cousins, the peaceful bonobos, three types of high-flying orangutans and those gentle giants of the jungle, the gorillas. Discover where and how they live, their biology, what they eat and what they share in common with humans—beyond their opposable thumbs. These giant mammals are our closest relatives in the animal world, known for their intelligence, complex social structures and communication skills. But great apes everywhere are in trouble. Their habitat is being destroyed by deforestation and the effects of climate change. Their population is dropping, and fast. In Great Apes, find out what conservationists, scientists and young people all over the world are doing to protect them.

Christopher Gudgeon is an author and poet and screenwriter. He’s contributed to dozens of periodicals, including Playboy, MAD, National Lampoon, Geist, Event, and Malahat Review; and has written seventeen books, from critically acclaimed fiction like Song of Kosovo and Greetings from the Vodka Sea, to celebrated biographies of Stan Rogers and Milton Acorn, to a range of popular history on subjects as varied as sex, sexuality, fishing and lotteries. Gudgeon has more than 150 professional TV and film credits including creating, writing, and producing the Gemini-award winning series Ghost Trackers and the documentary, The Trick with the Gun. In his varied and spotty career, Gudgeon has worked a variety of jobs across Canada, the United States, and Europe including psychiatric orderly, rent boy, bartender, rock musician, rodeo clown, TV weatherman, and youth outreach worker. Gudgeon, who is bisexual, has been in an open relationship with author/self-help guru Jasper Vander Voorde since 2009. He divides his time between Los Angeles and Victoria, B.C.

Christopher Gudgeon's profile page