Zonia's Rain Forest

"This is quite a recent book. Juana Martinez-Neal is Peruvian, and she has written about the Ashaninka indigenous people, who don’t have much exposure. As an educator, you always talk about the Amazon in Brazil. I really like how this book brings attention to the part of the Amazon which is in Peru. It’s really well done, how she chose to highlight and draw the people from that part of the Amazon. This is the kind of thing that I feel that children will pay attention to: she did all the paintings on banana bark and paper. So when you look at the drawings, if you look very carefully you can see that it wasn’t just painted on watercolour paper, there is another layer of texture. And when you share that with the children, it exposes them to a completely different idea of how the book was made. It wasn’t simply ideas drawn on paper and printed. I always explain to them how the artist spent some time in the Amazon getting to know the people, getting to know the landscape, and that she wanted to bring to the children an understanding about deforestation in the world, and that’s why she used the banana bark paper made by indigenous people in the Amazon. Sign up here for our newsletter featuring the best children’s and young adult books, as recommended by authors, teachers, librarians and, of course, kids. The paintings are a bit bold, with great detail. Through the story, the little girl Zonia follows a blue morpho butterfly. When I do a continent study with children, I talk about the animals and the insects, especially in the rain forest. So there’s a lot there that they can connect to if they are learning about the rain forest, like when Zonia meets the sloth. When she gets to the part in the book where the trees have been chopped down, the question is asked: what can we do about this? It’s a book that leaves a lot to be discussed. It’s not so explicit in telling the children what you have to do, or this is what must happen. I think it’s great to have this kind of book, because it leads to a lot of conversation without it being too obvious. I would say five upwards. Four year olds could definitely appreciate it too. It doesn’t have a lot of text, but I think the ideas of what’s happened here and what’s causing deforestation, children five years old and up would be able to make more connections and understand, especially after learning about the Amazon in school or doing a unit on South America."