AERIAL APES

Now limited to the remote forests of Southeast Asia, the white-handed gibbons are small (under 15 pounds in weight and less than three feet in height) and exceedingly agile arboreal apes. They are shown here climbing and hanging, leaping and gliding, from tree to tree, then sleeping balanced on a branch. The authors have studied and photographed the gibbons on the small Bermuda island where several have been transported for observation, and their photos ably support the message of their afterword: that a gibbon is not a ""complete"" gibbon unless he is free to live in wilderness treetops. The target six-to-nine-year-old readers, however, would have a more ""complete"" experience had the authors integrated the information contained in their advanced two-page introduction (upper elementary level, at least) with the more comfortable large-print commentary that accompanies the pictures. Nevertheless, the photos speak for themselves--and for the gibbon--and the information is there.