My Favorite Animals - Paintings and stories by SEVEN, SEVEN-YEAR-OLD, YOUNGSTERS

“Hi, there! My name’s Sophia Bartsch and my favorite animal is the monkey. That work of art of a monkey that you see above is one that I painted the other day from memory. A lot of my friends said they didn’t think it was a good likeness of a monkey but I’m an artist and that’s the way I remembered how that monkey looked when he stared at me. You see, I went to the Zoo with my mother a few months ago and I saw this monkey making faces at me. And he actually did have a blue face. Well, it looked blue to me and that’s all that matters to an artist. Regardless, he was so cute that I called him JoJo. He was an Orangutan but a lot of people confuse orangutans with their cousins that are Chimpanzees. But no matter what people think they are, or what they call them, to me they’re just monkeys. From what I could tell as I watched the monkeys while I was at the Zoo, was that they love the fact that they're monkeys and you can tell that by the way they act; they're so happy. So I’m sure that none of them would want to be anything else but a monkey. And it’s not because they bear a likeness to people, but because, I think, people bear a likeness to them. I sometimes wonder who came first, man or monkey? I asked my father about that and he said that no matter what anybody says or thinks that I should take his word for it that our family did not come from monkeys…but he added that he wasn’t so sure about his brother, John. But I’m sure he was only kidding about my uncle. But with that thought aside, the reason the monkey is my favorite animal is because of their great sense of humor. And to me, their humor becomes obvious when they get together because there’s no doubt in my mind that they’re making fun at us humans by the way they laugh after they tell one another a story as they point at us. Gosh, how I wish I could speak their language because their stories must be really funny ones. They do so many crazy things that make people laugh, and I’ll bet they do some of those tricks just to show off.