Inspiration
In 1989, Lynne Cherry learned about the deforestation of the Amazon rainforest and thought that maybe young people could help to save it. She was attending graduate school at Yale University at the time and she wrote The Great Kapok Tree while on a train ride between New Haven and Washington, DC. Soon thereafter, Tom Lovejoy, then at World Wildlife Fund, gave Cherry an artist in residency at WWF and he and the other scientists there provided her with their rainforest photographs to use as reference. Cherry also immersed herself in the "tropical forest" in the New York Botanical Garden. Lovejoy and other WWF biologists, and Brian Boom, the director of the NY Botanical Garden, facilitated her travel to Manaus, Brazil, to experience the rainforest firsthand. She explored the vast forest around Lovejoy's research site, part of his famous "forest fragments" project, and sketched and photographed the plants and animals there. [2]
When the book was released in 1990, coinciding with the twentieth anniversary of Earth Day, Cherry told a reporter, "When kids grow up, in another 20 years, they'll be the people making the decisions. If they're raised with these ideas ingrained in them, it will affect national policy. We will have raised a whole generation of environmentalists." [2]
Reception
Upon its release, the book received mixed reviews from some critics. Kimberly Olson Fakih in the Los Angeles Times praised it for its "splendid paintings in tropical colors" but said the story was undermined by "soap-box oratory". [6] Similarly, Susan Bolotin in The New York Times said the book had "lush illustrations" but suffered from "peculiar language" and "preachiness". She said that Cherry was "jumping on the environmental bandwagon" but, actually, for years, Cherry had been leading the bandwagon. [7] However, the large color illustration from the book that accompanied this review piqued readers' interest and paved its path as a best-seller. The first printing of 15,000 copies sold out within a few weeks after the book's release, [2] by 1995, it had sold a quarter-million copies, and it has now sold over a million copies including many foreign language translations. [8] The book is beloved by millions of children who are very moved by the plight of the animals and are relieved when the woodcutter spares the tree. Many American elementary teachers use the book in their classes. [9] Students have put on thousands of plays and musicals based on the book to educate their parents and communities about the importance of saving the rainforest.
The Great Kapok Tree received a Charlotte Award from the New York State Reading Association. [10] It has also been named an NSTA-CBC Outstanding Science Trade Book for Children, an American Booksellers Association "Pick of the Lists", and an International Reading Association Teacher's Choice. [11] In September 2020, the publisher, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, published a 30th Anniversary paperback edition with a new letter from the author and back matter about what kids can do to save rainforests. Although her book has raised awareness for over 30 years, Cherry is sad about the continued destruction of the rainforest. A 2014 Mongabay article describes Cherry's continued work empowering youth to save the natural world. [12]
Deforestation or forest clearance is the removal of a forest or stand of trees from land that is then converted to non-forest use. Deforestation can involve conversion of forest land to farms, ranches, or urban use. The most concentrated deforestation occurs in tropical rainforests. About 31% of Earth's land surface is covered by forests at present. This is one-third less than the forest cover before the expansion of agriculture, with half of that loss occurring in the last century. Between 15 million to 18 million hectares of forest, an area the size of Bangladesh, are destroyed every year. On average 2,400 trees are cut down each minute.
Ceiba pentandra is a tropical tree of the order Malvales and the family Malvaceae, native to Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean, northern South America, and West Africa. A somewhat smaller variety was introduced to South and Southeast Asia, where it is cultivated.
The Amazon rainforest, also called Amazon jungle or Amazonia, is a moist broadleaf tropical rainforest in the Amazon biome that covers most of the Amazon basin of South America. This basin encompasses 7,000,000 km2 (2,700,000 sq mi), of which 5,500,000 km2 (2,100,000 sq mi) are covered by the rainforest. This region includes territory belonging to nine nations and 3,344 formally acknowledged indigenous territories.
Rainforests are forests characterized by a closed and continuous tree canopy, moisture-dependent vegetation, the presence of epiphytes and lianas and the absence of wildfire. Rainforests can be generally classified as tropical rainforests or temperate rainforests, but other types have been described.
Ceiba is a genus of trees in the family Malvaceae, native to tropical and subtropical areas of the Americas and tropical West Africa. Some species can grow to 70 m (230 ft) tall or more, with a straight, largely branchless trunk that culminates in a huge, spreading canopy, and buttress roots that can be taller than a grown person. The best-known, and most widely cultivated, species is Kapok, Ceiba pentandra, one of several trees known as kapok.
The Amazon basin is the part of South America drained by the Amazon River and its tributaries. The Amazon drainage basin covers an area of about 6,300,000 km2 (2,400,000 sq mi), or about 35.5 percent of the South American continent. It is located in the countries of Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname, and Venezuela, as well as the territory of French Guiana.
Tropical rainforests are rainforests that occur in areas of tropical rainforest climate in which there is no dry season – all months have an average precipitation of at least 60 mm – and may also be referred to as lowland equatorial evergreen rainforest. True rainforests are typically found between 10 degrees north and south of the equator ; they are a sub-set of the tropical forest biome that occurs roughly within the 28-degree latitudes. Within the World Wildlife Fund's biome classification, tropical rainforests are a type of tropical moist broadleaf forest that also includes the more extensive seasonal tropical forests.
La Xtabay is a Yucatec Maya folklore about a demonic femme fatale who preys upon men in the Yucatán Peninsula. She is said to dwell in the forest to lure men to their deaths with her incomparable beauty. She is described as having beautiful, shining black hair that falls down to her ankles and wearing a white dress. One of the most accepted versions of the myth comes from the book, Diez Leyendas Mayas (1998), written by Jesus Azcorra Alejos.
An evergreen forest is a forest made up of evergreen trees. They occur across a wide range of climatic zones, and include trees such as conifers and holly in cold climates, eucalyptus, Live oak, acacias, magnolia, and banksia in more temperate zones, and rainforest trees in tropical zones.
The Congolian rainforests are a broad belt of lowland tropical moist broadleaf forests which extend across the basin of the Congo River and its tributaries in Central Africa. They are the only major rainforests which absorb more carbon than they emit.
The wildlife of Malaysia is diverse, with Malaysia being a megadiverse country. Most of the country is covered in rainforest, which hosts a huge diversity of plant and animal species. There are approximately 361 mammal species, 694 bird species, 250 reptile species, and 150 frog species found in Malaysia. Its large marine territory also holds a great diversity of life, with the country's coastal waters comprising part of the Coral Triangle.
Brazil once had the highest deforestation rate in the world and in 2005 still had the largest area of forest removed annually. Since 1970, over 700,000 square kilometres (270,000 sq mi) of the Amazon rainforest have been destroyed. In 2001, the Amazon was approximately 5,400,000 square kilometres (2,100,000 sq mi), which is only 87% of the Amazon's original size. According to official data, about 729,000 km² have already been deforested in the Amazon biome, which corresponds to 17% of the total. 300,000 km² have been deforested in the last 20 years.
Lynne Cherry is an American author and illustrator of nature-themed children's books, book essays and journal articles and a film producer. In 2009 she was designated a Women's History Month Honoree by the National Women's History Project.
Flute's Journey: The Life of a Wood Thrush is a children's picture book by Lynne Cherry, creator of The Great Kapok Tree. It was published in 1997 by Harcourt Brace and Company.
Rates and causes of deforestation vary from region to region around the world. In 2009, two-thirds of the world's forests were located in just 10 countries: Russia, Brazil, Canada, the United States, China, Australia, The Democratic Republic of the Congo, Indonesia, India, and Peru.
Kapok is a cotton-like plant fibre obtained from the seed pods of a number of trees in the Malvaceae family, which is used for stuffing mattresses and pillows, for padding and cushioning, and as insulation.
Tropical vegetation is any vegetation in tropical latitudes. Plant life that occurs in climates that are warm year-round is in general more biologically diverse that in other latitudes. Some tropical areas may receive abundant rain the whole year round, but others have long dry seasons which last several months and may vary in length and intensity with geographic location. These seasonal droughts have great impact on the vegetation, such as in the Madagascar spiny forests. Rainforest vegetation is categorized by five layers. The top layer being the upper tree layer. Here you will find the largest and widest trees in all the forest. These trees tend to have very large canopy's so they can be fully exposed to sunlight. A layer below that is the middle tree layer. Here you will find more compact trees and vegetation. These trees tend to be more skinny as they are trying to gain any sunlight they can. The third layer is the lower tree area. These trees tend to be around five to ten meters high and tightly compacted. The trees found in the third layer are young trees trying to grow into the larger canopy trees. The fourth layer is the shrub layer beneath the tree canopy. This layer is mainly populated by sapling trees, shrubs, and seedlings. The fifth and final layer is the herb layer which is the forest floor. The forest floor is mainly bare except for various plants, mosses, and ferns. The forest floor is much more dense than above because of little sunlight and air movement.
The Ecuadorian dry forests (NT0214) is an ecoregion near the Pacific coast of the Ecuador. The habitat has been occupied by people for centuries and has been severely damaged by deforestation, overgrazing and hillside erosion due to unsustainable agriculture. Only 1% of the original forest remains. The patches of forest, mostly secondary growth, are fragmented. They are home to many endemic species at risk of extinction.
The Chocó–Darién moist forests (NT0115) is an ecoregion in the west of Colombia and east of Panama. The region has extremely high rainfall, and the forests hold great biodiversity. The northern and southern parts of the ecoregion have been considerably modified for ranching and farming, and there are threats from logging for paper pulp, uncontrolled gold mining, coca growing and industrialisation, but the central part of the ecoregion is relatively intact.
The Amazon rainforest is a species-rich biome in which thousands of species live, including animals found nowhere else in the world. To date, there is at least 40,000 different kinds of plants, 427 kinds of mammals, 1,300 kinds of birds, 378 kinds of reptiles, more than 400 kinds of amphibians, and around 3,000 freshwater fish are living in Amazon.
