Ocean State Libraries

When Todd is both happy and anxious about trying to fit in with the regular fifth grade class but feels confused about how to relate to his former friends in the Special Needs class, a school assignment on the exploited pygmy, Ota Benga, helps give him confidence and clarity.

"An award-winning journalist reveals a little-known and shameful episode in American history, when an African man was used as a zoo exhibit--a shocking story of racial prejudice, science, and tragedy in the early years of the twentieth century. Ota Benga, a young Congolese man, was featured as an exhibit at the St. Louis World's Fair. Two years later, in 1906, the Bronx Zoo displayed him in its Monkey House, caging the slight 103-pound, four-foot...