Fourteen Monkeys

“This book was inspired by a sin­gle para­graph in The Life of Mam­mals by David Atten­bor­ough. It explained how a half dozen species of guenon mon­keys can all live togeth­er in the forests of Africa because they have dif­fer­ent lifestyles and habits. As I was read­ing this pas­sage, I imme­di­ate­ly thought of the fun poem “10 Lit­tle Mon­keys” and won­dered if I could cre­ate a non­fic­tion ver­sion with facts about this group of monkeys.

“That idea did­n’t work out, but I was so fas­ci­nat­ed by mon­keys that I kept doing research and talk­ing about them every chance I got. Even­tu­al­ly, my friend and children’s book illus­tra­tor Katy Tanis, who is on a quest to see every mon­key species in the world in its nat­ur­al envi­ron­ment, sug­gest­ed that I read High Moon over the Ama­zon: My Quest to Under­stand the Mon­keys of the Night by Patri­cia Wright. That book led me to the very spe­cial com­mu­ni­ty of mon­keys that inhab­it Manú Nation­al Park in Peru. The more I learned about them, the more con­vinced I became that they were the per­fect fit for the book I want­ed to write.

“While the text doesn’t fol­low the same meter as ‘10 Lit­tle Mon­keys,’ you can see the influ­ence if you look close­ly. Because I knew curi­ous kids would want to know more about the mon­keys than I could pos­si­bly incor­po­rate into the poet­ic main text, I added sec­ondary text full of addi­tion­al details as well as rich back­mat­ter burst­ing with even more information.

“Manú Nation­al Park isn’t open to vis­i­tors, but as I was research­ing the book, I was able to inter­view a sci­en­tist who spent time there. I also drew upon my expe­ri­ence observ­ing wildlife in the rain forests of Cos­ta Rica, where I was lucky enough to spend time watch­ing three of the species includ­ed in Four­teen Mon­keys.”