Amazon Boy
Grade 1-4-- A boy and his father journey down the Amazon by steamboat to visit the city of Belem, a first visit for the boy. Lewin's impressionistic watercolors convey the lush river banks and surrounding foliage, and the crowded excitement of the city's harbor. The light-filled pictures, dense with detail, reinforce the theme that the riches of the rain forest must be protected. Unfortunately, the message is delivered in a didactic manner that verges on the sentimental, with a tear-filled lecture by the father and a remarkable sacrifice by the son. Yet the text gives little information about how to save the Amazon region from farming and mining. Readers are told that killing the largest fish is a terrible mistake, without learning why. They are shown folk medicines made from animals that need protecting, without a word about the conflict that surrounds this issue. Since children will respond to the pictures and the timely message, it is disappointing that the text is so thin and unsatisfying. --Kathleen Odean, Moses Brown School, Providence, RICopyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.