This is a challenging, important and highly readable book, which brings alive the human voices behind a major environmental tragedy. It will take children on a fascinating journey to meet some of the peoples who live in the world's disappearing rain forests. Readers will share their traditional stories, absorbing many new ideas about the natural world, their fellow human beings - and even about themselves. They will travel to the Amazon to hear about the mysterious transformations of Jaguar-Man; and then to central Africa to discover what happened when the Most Beautiful Song in the Forest was destroyed. The book also contains a wealth of factual information about the original forest peoples' ways of life.