How Jane Goodall Turned Her Childhood Dream into Reality: A Sweet Illustrated Story of Purpose and Deep Determination
"One should want only one thing and want it constantly," young André Gide half-observed, half-resolved in his journal. "Then one is sure of getting it." More than a century later, Werner Herzog wrote passionately of the "uninvited duty" that a sense of purpose plants in the heart, leaving one with "no choice but to push on." That combination of desiring something with inextinguishable intensity – which begins with letting your life speakand daring to listen – and pursuing it with steadfast doggedness is perhaps the single common thread in the lives of those we most admire as luminaries of enduring genius. It is also at the heart of what it means to find your purpose and live it.
As a lover of illustrated biographies of cultural icons – such as those ofPablo Neruda, Julia Child, Albert Einstein, and Maria Merian – I was thrilled to stumble upon a wonderful take on the early life of one of my greatest heroes, Jane Goodall, and how she came to live the dream that bewitched her at a young age. In Me...Jane (public library), celebrated cartoonist, author, and animal rights advocate Patrick McDonnell tells the story of how the seed planted by a childhood dream blossomed, under the generous beams of deep dedication, into the reality of a purposeful life.
McDonnell's protagonist is not Jane Goodall the widely influential and wildly revered elder of science and peace – one of a handful of people in history to have both the titles Dame and Doctor, and the subject of a very different illustrated biography – but little Jane, the ten-year-old girl who decided that she was going to work with animals in Africa when she grew up and, despite her family's poverty, despite living in an era when girls were not encouraged to live the life of science or adventure, despite nearly everyone telling her that it was impossible, turned her dream into reality.
With simple, enormously expressive illustrations and an eloquent economy of words, McDonnell – creator of the beloved MUTTS comic strip – begins at the very beginning: that fateful day when little Jane was given a stuffed monkey named Jubilee.
Jane and Jubilee became inseparable, and she shared with him everything she loved – especially the outdoors. Together, they watched the birds and the spiders and the squirrels fill the backyard with aliveness.
At night, Jane and Jubilee read books to better understand what they saw.
One day, tickled to find out where eggs came from, they snuck into grandma's chicken coop and observed the miracle of life.
It was a magical world full of joy and wonder, and Jane felt very much a part of it.
Jane liked to climb her beloved beech tree with Jubilee on her back, then sit perched on its branches reading and rereading Tarzan, imagining herself in place of that other Jane, wild and filled with wonder amid the jungles of Africa.
That dream soon became an all-consuming desire not just to go to Africa but to live there, trying to understand the animals and help them.
Every night Jane tucked Jubilee into bed and fell asleep with that dream, until one day – and such is the genius of McDonnell's elegantly simple message of the dreamer's doggedness – she awakes in a tent in the Gombe, the seedbed of what would become a remarkable career and an extraordinary life of purpose.
Goodall herself – who founded the heartening youth-led learning and community action initiative Roots & Shoots – writes in the afterword:
Me...Jane, which received the prestigious Caldecott Honor and is a spectacular addition to these great children's books celebrating science and scientists, is an emboldening treasure from cover to cover. Complement it with Goodall on science and spirituality, her answers to the Proust Questionnaire, and her own little-known children's book, then treat yourself to "Dream Jane Dream" – a magnificent homage to Goodall by jazz singer-songwriter Lori Henriques:
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