Snowball

by Osa Johnson

The story of how the Johnsons' came upon a baby gorilla in their travels and their time with him as a pet.

And also an educational tale of the opportunities of watching gorillas in their natural habitat when Africa's interior jungles were barely explored.

12 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 1979

About the author

In the first half of the 20th century an American couple from Kansas named Martin and Osa Johnson captured the public's imagination through their films and books of adventure in exotic, far-away lands...Photographers, explorers, naturalists and authors, Martin and Osa studied the wildlife and peoples of East and Central Africa, the South Pacific Islands and British North Borneo...They explored then unknown lands and brought back knowledge of cultures thousands of miles away through their films, writings and lectures.

From 1917-1936, the Johnsons set up camp in some of the most remote areas of the world and provided an unmatched photographic record of the wildernesses of Kenya, the Congo, British North Borneo and the Solomon and New Hebrides Islands...Their equipment was the most advanced motion pictures apparatus of the day, some of it designed by Martin Johnson himself.

When the young adventurers left their home in Kansas to explore and photograph these lands, little did they realize that they would provide the world with a photographic record of the African game of unimagined magnitude and beauty...The Johnsons gave the filmmakers and researchers of today an important source of ethnological and zoological material which would otherwise have been lost.

Their photographs represent one of the great contributions to the pictorial history of the world...Their films serve to document a wilderness that has long since vanished, tribal cultures and customs that ceased to exist.

Through popular movies such as SIMBA (1928) and BABOONA (1935) and best-selling books still in print such as I Married Adventure (1940), Martin and Osa popularized camera safaris and an interest in African wildlife conservation for generations of Americans...Their legacy is a record of the animals and cultures of many remote areas of the world which have undergone significant changes.

The outstanding accomplishments and legacy of Martin and Osa Johnson - their films, photographs, expedition reports, correspondence and personal memorabilia - are housed at The Martin and Osa Johnson Museum.

Reviews

[J · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I was in the fourth grade we had a skit that was being put together that allowed us to explore fellow Kansans and their contributions to the world at large. As a result I came across the Johnsons who as a married couple helped the "civilized" world of their time to get to know more about little explored places such as the Pacific islands and most importantly Africa. And sadly not much seems to be remembered about them while it has taken me this long to be able to actually say I have read some of the works of a woman who has influenced my adventurous dreams.

This book has given me a wonderful chance to be able to hear the voice of a woman who was feminine yet bold, playful but serious. She gives to a much younger audience the opportunity to learn about gorillas before people like Dian Fossey had opened the door upon the greater gorilla experience and to know why it is bad to keep young gorillas as pets even if one ends up being able to give them to zoo.

All in all this is a fun and simple reading book that children of all ages will enjoy while at the same time getting a chance to learn of a wonderful couple whom the world should remember for their contributions in film and photography.