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. 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. During November 2019, the author gave 125 school talks in Hong Kong, Shanghai and Singapore. “Shanghai teachers were a bit naughty because my speaker’s fee will cover three one-hour talks, or four 45-minute talks, and when I saw the schedule it was like six talks a day,” she says. It’s not just children who fall for Sleepy the Sloth, the button-nosed creature from the jungles of Central and South America. “He was the hero of every single session,” Latta says, “The children were really reluctant to let go of Sleepy. I even had to prise it away from one teacher.” Based in Sydney’s bushy Upper North Shore, Latta invests a huge amount of time bringing the plight of endangered animals to the world’s attention using images and words. In the case of the tree-dwelling sloth – which eats, sleeps, mates and gives birth upside down – Latta travelled to the Jaguar Rescue Centre in Costa Rica, Central America, to learn about the species. She was invited there by zoologist and sanctuary founder Encar Garcia, who has been rehabilitating injured and orphaned sloths and other mammals to release back into the wild since 2008. “It took five years to find a location where I could find [and photograph] sloths in their natural habitat,” says Latta. “I flew 50 hours to Costa Rica and back to be able to tell the sloth story, and then made a video so that children could see the animals in action in the wild.” “There I fell in love with the most adorable sloth, who became the ‘star’ of the book. I was even allowed to take her outside the sanctuary and photograph her in her natural habitat.” Latta started out in self-publishing about 25 years ago. While she has been all over the world promoting her books, Hong Kong is her biggest market. “I’ve got a wonderful agent and book distributor in Hong Kong, and for the last couple of years she’s been booking all my schools for me, and especially sometimes huge Chinese schools.” The author has faced audiences of up to 500 Hong Kong schoolchildren. How does she get her message across to such a large group of primarily Chinese speakers, and engage with them so personally? “I had to learn the art of telling a story in short English sentences, and then having it translated into Chinese,” she says. Latta says schoolchildren in Hong Kong are enthusiastic, clamouring around her, gesturing and always wanting to know more. “They find it an honour to learn. They are a very different audience from anywhere else. They get very excited at seeing the animal,” she says. She feels her literary menagerie ties in with the symbolic place of animals in Chinese culture. “Some of these animals are part of the Chinese zodiac,” she points out. As with all Latta’s animal books, the creature is at the heart of the story. Sleepy is the narrator of the book about sloths, for instance. He introduces himself, describes his habitat, eating habits and quirks – such as the way he climbs down his tree once a week to fertilise the ground for the sloth moths that make their home in his hair, where they lay their eggs. She knows the power of pictures too. Each book is illustrated using vivid, close-up photographs of the threatened species that is its subject. There are pages of animal facts, “did you know” insights, and habitat distribution maps. “I have also made a host of videos about the animals, which are free, so they can go onto my website and look at the animals in action in the wild. So then even reluctant readers get excited looking at the animals, and they then want to read the book,” Latta says. Interest in Latta’s work coincides with a growing tendency among younger Chinese generations to support animal rights , as well as the desire to see animals in the wild, not in captivity. Latta sees that appetite at increasingly younger ages. “I am often asked to talk to [kindergarten] children … sometimes even pre. That terrified me at first. I thought, ‘I don’t know how to talk to children that young’. But then I showed the classes the videos, and they were just mesmerised.” Latta thinks a big draw is the humour, to which even Hong Kong tots respond. “I always add something very funny in the video and they scream with laughter. They remember those funny things, like the orangutan trying to fit 15 bananas into his mouth, and me with my ‘boyfriend’, who is a chimpanzee. So there’s a lot of storytelling – true storytelling – which they are captivated with.” A defining moment of her nearly 30 years living in Hong Kong paved the way for her publishing career. A former advertising designer, Latta and her husband worked in Hong Kong in the early 1980s for competing agencies. I hope in my small way I’ve inspired children to care about endangered animals. My reward is a young student saying to me: I want to do what you do when I grow up Jan Latta, children’s author and wildlife photographer “He was with Young and Rubicam from New York, and he set up the agency [in Hong Kong]. I was creative director of [another agency]. They stole client No 1, 2 and 3, and my art director … and I was banned from advertising in Hong Kong from that moment on. And then we separated. I had no job, no visa, no money, and it was one of those lovely turning points in life when you think, ‘Shall I go back to being a highly paid creative director in Australia or will I stay in Hong Kong?’ “I stayed. I eventually had a little boutique publishing company, and we lost that with the Chinese handover . So after being in Hong Kong for 27 years, I returned [to Australia] in 1997, and this is what I have been doing ever since.” Latta’s books illustrate the incredible charisma of some of the animal kingdom’s most extraordinary creatures. Does she feel her storytelling will help them survive? And prompt some of the children who read her books to experience a similar turning point? “Yes, I hope so. I hope in my small way I’ve inspired children to care about endangered animals. My reward is a young student saying to me: ‘I want to do what you do when I grow up’.”