How coming face to face with a gorilla in the wild changed a career: children’s book author on her endangered animal series

Children’s author and wildlife photographer Jan Latta gives hundreds of talks a year to schoolchildren in China and Hong Kong about saving endangered animals

The spark for her second career, after decades in advertising and custom publishing, was a visit to Africa to see mountain gorillas, then down to their last 600

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Author Jan Latta, Sleepy the Sloth and children at Concordia school in Shanghai, China. Photo: courtesy of Jan Latta

Published: 12:15pm, 9 Jan 2020Updated: 12:16pm, 9 Jan 2020

Jan Latta’s interest in wild animals was piqued when, as custom publisher of a magazine for Regent International Hotels, she read a photo essay about African animals by conservationist and wildlife photographer Karl Ammann.

“That was it. I had to see Africa,” she says. “Karl organised a trip for me to see the mountain gorillas in Rwanda, and when I came face to face with one it changed my life, and my career. My guide said there were only 600 mountain gorillas left in the world. I wanted to do something to help them survive.”

Latta is an author and photographer whose books – targeting readers from preschool to secondary school – are designed to educate children about endangered species.

Following on from Kolah the Koala, Lennie the Leopard, Ollie the Orangutan, Gerry the Giraffe and Ziggy the Zebra, her Sleepy the Sloth book, published in late 2017, like her other titles, has generated interest in both Hong Kong and China.

Author Jan Latta with her book Sleepy the Sloth. Photo: Tamara Thiessen

These days, when she travels to Hong Kong from Sydney she often has a sloth in her case. Not a real one, but “Sleepy the Sloth”, her pug-faced plush toy, who has clocked up thousands of air miles over the past year. Latta and Sleepy have packed their cases several times since its publication and flown off on Asian book tours.