Half Brother

Kenneth Oppel

384 pages

After weeks spent in adult literature, I returned to the YA shelves on the hunt for an audiobook.   I was primarily looking for a book that would cover about the right amount of time for a solo drive to KC and back I was making one weekend day.  I found Half Brother – a story set in the 1970’s about a family who adopts a chimp for sign language research – and though it ran a tad long, I was intrigued by the premise.

Oppel did a masterful job rounding out his main character, Ben, the 13-year-old child of two behavioral psychologists.  The family moves across Canada so that Ben’s father can lead up an experiment in conjunction with a university, the aim of which is to adopt an infant chimp, immerse him in the human experience, and teach him sign language.  All angles of the issue are covered – the ethical dilemmas, the attachment issues – but at the heart of the story is a boy who learns to love the chimp, Zan, and his growing pains as  the freakish new kid in town.  The family is alternately praised, ridiculed and contemned, and as Ben’s parents are left with decisions that threaten to tear them apart, Ben tries to decide what he really feels is best for his “little brother” – the chimp Zan, who he cares for, dresses, feeds, plays and speaks with every day. 

This is a gem of a YA novel – fine writing, a fascinating subject, and quite a lot of heart.