I loved Jim Ottaviani’s last book with us (Feynman, illustrated by Leland Myrick, who is also awesome), so I was super-excited to find that Jim was doing yet another non-fiction book for First Second, this time illustrated by Maris Wicks, whose art I love.

This new non-fiction book is called Primates, and it’s about (you guessed it) primates, which are drawn super-adorably by Maris Wicks (as clearly all primates should be; listen up — primates, if you’re getting portraits done by artists not Maris, you are missing out).

We just got finished books in — they look gorgeous!  I can’t wait for this book to be in stores in June.

Here’s the front cover.  Our designer, Colleen AF Venable, modeled it on the all-the-primates-line-up Origin of the Species cover.  (Except everyone is cuter here.)

Here’s the spine!  Including all the primatologists in the book — Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, and Birute Galdikas — and all the primates!

This book is a jacketed hardcover; here’s the cover that’s under the jacket.  I would just like to say, if you gave me the opportunity to be in this tree, I would take it.

Here’s the front flap and the endpapers.  They’re a gorgeous green color!

I like the front flap / back flap image choice where the back flap is clearly Jane viewing the chimpanzees that are in the binocular-style front flap panel.  She can see through the book!

Here’s one of my favorite pages, with Dian Fossey seeing gorillas in the wild for the first time.

And here’s Birute studying orangutangs.  They are adorable!

Also an important part of this non-fiction book: end notes!  There’s an authors notes and a biography and everything, so that people can know where to go if they want to read more.

And the back cover!  Can you believe that one of the people at our parent company had never heard of the Barrel of Monkeys toys that our designer, Colleen AF Venable, was modeling these on?  We had to explain.

This book is going to be awesome!  We can’t wait until June when we can show it to you all.