Albert Bigelow Paine 16 min read

Born on the first day of April in the depths of an African forest and called a jungle joke, a merry monkey tells his own life story in rollicking verse and comic pictures.

Albert Bigelow Paine's 1897 book, illustrated by Hy Mayer, is a whimsical animal fantasy for children. Playful, charming, gently comic. Read it for a delightful Victorian picture-book, a monkey's mock-heroic memoir, told in bouncing rhyme, from the future biographer of Mark Twain.

In its time

Published in 1897, during the 1890s, wells arrives.

Reading it

16 min read (a short story, a single idea, delivered and gone).

Illustrated by

Henry Mayer