The threat to the Amazon rain forest from illegal logging, farming, mining, and oil extraction is a devastating matter best introduced to children only with utmost care, so that they do not become disheartened. This book's focus on friendship, beauty, joy, play —and, ultimately, communal outcry — tenderly meets this need.
Zonia, of the Asháninka people, relates to the forest "always green and full of life" as her kin. In this book's vividly beautiful pages, she hears the forest call to her and each morning answers by greeting the blue morpho butterfly, the South American coati, the river dolphin, the giant anteater, and seven other of her animal and plant friends in an intimate, playful way. We see her, for instance, smiling through lush foliage at the blue butterfly, who's with her throughout the book, and hanging upside down from a branch to greet the red-tailed boa constrictor who helps her "see the world in new ways."
Author and illustrator Juana Martinez Neal won a Caldecott Honor for her debut book Alma and How She Got Her Name, and her list of further awards is long. She allows the bounty of the Zonia's Rain Forest to fill the hearts of her four-to-eight-year-old readers before, near the end, she brings Zonia and readers to the edge of a barren, heavily logged area that frightens Zonia, leading her to run home to her mother for guidance. In the final art, we see Zonia adorned with red paint made from achiote to signal strength and determination. She now knows that she needs to answer — and we all need to answer — this call from the rain forest for help.
The story's back matter includes a translation of Zonia's Rain Forest into Asháninka, facts about tropical forests, short descriptions of threats to the Amazon Rain Forest, scientific names of Zonia's animal and plant friends, and selected sources and resources. Most moving of all is a section about the Asháninka People, who "have a long history of being disenfranchised and forced from their homelands. They have just as long a history of resistance and of fighting for self-determination."
This book belongs in every child's hands for the sake of the Amazon, which powerfully mitigates the effects of global climate change, and for the pure beauty and joy it conveys.
