fully stoked books

Corky Koala activity book for kids

by Geraldine Hum

The activity book is full of Australian wildlife pictures and puzzles. Recommended for kids 5-10. Geraldine Hum is a gifted artist with a degree in graphic design who has specialised in illustration and rainforest lansdcape and flower paintings in oils and watercolours for 35 years. Her work is well-known and recognised by conservationists around Australia.

It's every monkey for themselves

by vanessa woods

Imagine you live in a remote village in Central America. Every morning the alarm wakes you up, and for the next 14 hours you run through the jungle, chasing monkeys. You don't know why you do it. You just do. You see everything. They quarrel. They copulate. They stab each other in the back. Imagine you live in a house with eight other people. You quarrel. You copulate. You stab each other in the back. Slowly, the differences between you and the monkeys - the differences you assumed would always be there - disappear. Memories of civilisation fades. The jungle takes over. Mosquitoes swarm in clouds. Fungus creeps into your crotch. Killer bees conspire to murder you. Something pushes you over the edge. Maybe you smash your head on a rock. Maybe you fall in love with the wrong guy. Maybe it's something worse. It's every monkey for themselves is a young woman's story of life in the jungle. Witty, troubled, and deeply moving, it is about the lovers that trip you up, and the friendships that keep you going. Above all, it is a triumphant account of survival, camaraderie, and love - monkey style.

The bonobo puzzle

Vanessa is part of the Hominoid Psychology Research Group which compares the psychology of humans, chimpanzees, and bonobos. Our aim is to find the differences between us and our closest living relatives, which will hopefully give us the key to what makes us human. Bonobos are especially important to this question because we know hardly anything about them. Bonobos are an extremely endangered ape (as few as 5,000 left in the wild) that only lives in the Democratic Republic of Congo which for the past 40 years has been torn apart by civil war. Chimpanzees live in violent male dominated societies. Rape and infanticide are common, as is war. Bonobos however, are peaceful and female dominated. There is no infanticide, sex is used to resolve all kinds of conflict, and bonobos do not have war.
Author, Vanessa Woods gives 30% of profits from her new book It's every monkey for themselves to Lola ya Bonobo, a sanctuary that plans to release its orphan bonobos into the wild. Buy your copy here and help make a difference.