Tales of the Amazon: How the Munduruku Indians Live

author: Daniel Munduruku (Daniel Monteiro Costa)

translator (from the Portuguese): Jane Springer

illustrator: Laurabeatriz

Groundwood Books / House of Anansi Press, 1996

grades 3-up 

Munduruku, Brazilian 

On the cover we see a young Munduruku boy, secure in his Amazon rainforest home, clearly a part of his Indigenous world. He knows what he comes from and his smiling, confident expression—along with the monkey comfortably perched on his head—invite the young reader to visit.

Tales of the Amazon: How the Munduruku Indians Live is divided into three parts—each told differently, and each related to the others.

In Part 1, “The Tale of the Boy Who Didn’t Know How to Dream,” the pajé (healer) names an infant boy Kaxi—“the moon that shines on humanity,” and will groom him to be the healer and spiritual guide to his people. In his training, Kaxi learns to “listen to the voices of our ancestors who speak to us in dreams.” He also learns about the importance of the struggle against outsiders who are damaging the rainforest. Finally, through a prophetic dream he learns how to “guide his people toward their future.” Young readers might giggle at the illustrations of people without clothes on; this could be an opportunity for teachers to challenge all kinds of assumptions.

Part 2, “The Indigenous Peoples of Brazil,” reads like a textbook. Short sections include, among others, “Indigenous Lands,” “Linguistic Diversity,” “Cultural Diversity,” “Marriage,” “Music,” “Work,” “Political Organization,” and “Indigenous Rights.” This material is by no means a thorough exploration of any of these issues. But since students at the 6^th-grade level (and even below) are especially interested in non-fiction about how people live, these sections can be used as a starting point for student research.

Part 3, “Chronicles and Testimonies,” are brief stories about Munduruku’s life, most of it away from his people. Our favorites include Munduruku’s listening to his grandfather’s stories and knowing that “those ancient myths say what cannot be said”; witnessing a debate between a Christian pastor and a young Guarani man about the nature of God; overhearing two women on a train arguing about whether or not he is a “real Indian”; and responding, both to a teacher who asks him what he does with mosquitoes, and to a child who wants to know if Indians eat people.

Portraying the luminous beauty of the Amazon rainforest and the interdependence of the animals and humans who live there, Laurabeatriz’s richly textured, pastel-on-canvas paintings, on a palette of browns, greens and blues, are dramatic and gorgeous.  

Weaknesses in the text include loaded terminology such as “hut,” “brave,” “warrior,“ “fire water,” and “hostile.” This may have been a function of the translation from the Portuguese. And the suggestions for further reading are dated and unhelpful.

But for the most part, Tales of the Amazon is engagingly written, beautifully illustrated and nicely designed, with lots of information that will resonate with young students and lead them to further research. Recommended.

—Beverly Slapin and María Cárdenas

(published 3/11/14)

Great Kapok Tree: A Tale of the Amazon Rain Forest

 

author: Lynne Cherry

illustrator: Lynne Cherry

Scholastic, 1990

preschool-grade 3

Brazilian

The world’s tropical rainforests are being destroyed at an alarming rate by multinational corporations, deforestation operations, road paving, cattle ranching, and, in Central and South America, the runaway eco-tourism industry. 

All of this is implied in Cherry’s myth-like tale of a lone woodsman who is assigned to chop down a huge kapok tree in the forest. After a few whacks, he sits down to rest and is lulled to sleep by the “heat and hum of the forest.” While asleep, the woodsman is visited by creatures who live in the forest—a boa constrictor, a bee, a troop of monkeys, a toucan, a macaw, a tree frog, a jaguar, four tree porcupines, “several anteaters,” and a three-toed sloth—who each tells him how this tree and everything in the forest is intricately related to each other. 

And finally, “a child from the Yanomamo tribe who lived in the rain forest” joins the creatures and whispers into the man’s ear, “Senhor, when you awake, please look upon us all with new eyes.”

The woodsman awakes with a start.

Before him stood the rain forest child, and all around him, staring, were the creatures who depended upon the great Kapok tree. What wondrous and rare animals they were!

He takes in everything: the “sun streaming through the canopy,” the “fragrant perfume” of the flowers, the “steamy mist rising from the forest floor,” and he knows he must make a decision.

The man stood and picked up his axe. He swung back his arm as though to strike the tree. Suddenly he stopped. He turned and looked at the animals and the child. He hesitated. Then he dropped the ax and walked out of the rainforest.

In The Great Kapok Tree, Cherry has produced an abundance of information about the flora and fauna of the rain forest, and about the necessity of preserving it. Her gorgeously rendered double-page spreads, in watercolors and colored pencils—on a palette of subdued earthy forest tones of mostly browns, greens and reds—aptly convey the beauty of the endangered rainforest ecosystems. And there’s a helpful world map that shows both the rainforests’ original extent and how much of them is left today.

However, two things trouble me about this story. One is that children might see the struggle to save the rainforests as merely about convincing individuals not to chop down trees—rather than about stopping the multinational corporations intent on chopping up the magnificent biospheres into marketable pieces. The second problem is that Cherry apparently drops in the “child from the Yanomamo tribe” to illustrate how the destruction of the rainforests affects humans as well as the forest creatures. But it’s unlikely—even in a myth—for a young child to be hanging around with a bunch of wild animals. It weakens, rather than strengthens, the story.

Lynne Cherry dedicated this book to Chico Mendes, a third-generation Brazilian rubber tapper, human rights activist and trade union leader who was assassinated by a rancher who would have profited from logging an area that had been planned as a reserve.

Rather than the tale of the rainforest’s being threatened by a single man with an ax who is then easily convinced to walk away, I would rather have seen a children’s version about how the Indigenous peoples of Brazil, together with local trade union activists and supporters around the world, are fighting to preserve the Amazon rainforest. Even the youngest children are capable of understanding the complexities of problems such as this one—and thinking about solutions.

So—but only as a jumping-off point for classroom discussions, research and activities about the struggle to save the world’s rainforests—The Great Kapok Tree is recommended.

—Beverly Slapin
(published 5/23/13)