What do you think?
Rate this book
All sizes and shapes of monkeys and apes
37 pages, Library Binding
Published January 1, 1970
About the author
Richard Armour
150 books37 followersRichard Armour, a college professor of English who specialized in Chaucer and the English Romantic poets, was best known as a prolific author of light verse and wacky parodies of academic scholarship. He was a professor of English at Scripps College in Claremont from 1945 to 1966.
Armour was raised in Pomona, California, where his father owned a drugstore. He graduated from Pomona College, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, then obtained his master's and Ph.D. in English literature at Harvard. He was a Harvard research fellow at the Victoria and Albert Museum library in London.
Armour was raised in Pomona, California, where his father owned a drugstore. He graduated from Pomona College, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, then obtained his master's and Ph.D. in English literature at Harvard. He was a Harvard research fellow at the Victoria and Albert Museum library in London.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
November 16, 2019
For a nonfiction children's book written in poetry and published in 1970, it's not bad. The limited palette of books of that era is always a bit jarring but the avocado and orange color scheme is so period-specific it kills me.
I like light verse regardless of the topic, and honestly, children's nonfiction is usually so light on actual facts that giving those high points in a brief poem is no worse than a bulleted list would be. Of course, I didn't know that it was going to be light verse or children's nonfiction: I was just working my way through the list of available Armour titles. But I'm half way through and rather liking it.
And of course it's an easy pun and a still common, albeit lazy, joke. And of course I mind when I'm happily reading along and out of nowhere the author insults me. But what really gnaws is this glimpse into what was so horribly wrong with much 20th century science: the assumptions that guarding and fighting are exclusively masculine pursuits, and that these activities are actually important or necessary to survival. An unspoken assumption which continues to plague pretty much every field, and lies behind so much of the appalling evo-psych nonsense. A few pages later in describing the gibbons it's "mother grooms father/ and sister grooms brother" which besides being factually wrong (in presenting grooming as gendered behavior) is also less euphonious.
My vexation isn't going to put me entirely off my Armour reading extravaganza, but I'm unlikely to find it as satisfying as I had anticipated. There are three more of his new-to-me books sitting in my stack: I'll certainly wait and see how those go before ordering more. Sexism: sucking the joy out of life since forever.
Library copy
I like light verse regardless of the topic, and honestly, children's nonfiction is usually so light on actual facts that giving those high points in a brief poem is no worse than a bulleted list would be. Of course, I didn't know that it was going to be light verse or children's nonfiction: I was just working my way through the list of available Armour titles. But I'm half way through and rather liking it.
The males do the guarding,/The fighting,/The bragging./The females do anything left,/such as nagging.
And of course it's an easy pun and a still common, albeit lazy, joke. And of course I mind when I'm happily reading along and out of nowhere the author insults me. But what really gnaws is this glimpse into what was so horribly wrong with much 20th century science: the assumptions that guarding and fighting are exclusively masculine pursuits, and that these activities are actually important or necessary to survival. An unspoken assumption which continues to plague pretty much every field, and lies behind so much of the appalling evo-psych nonsense. A few pages later in describing the gibbons it's "mother grooms father/ and sister grooms brother" which besides being factually wrong (in presenting grooming as gendered behavior) is also less euphonious.
My vexation isn't going to put me entirely off my Armour reading extravaganza, but I'm unlikely to find it as satisfying as I had anticipated. There are three more of his new-to-me books sitting in my stack: I'll certainly wait and see how those go before ordering more. Sexism: sucking the joy out of life since forever.
Library copy
Displaying 1 of 1 review