Amazon Diary Book

Most people spend Christmas vacation eating candy and cookies and visiting relatives, but not Alex Winters. He had the most surprising and exciting vacation ever! Experience the trip through Alex's journal, which includes photos, drawings and souvenirs. "A plane crash provides an unforeseen opportunity for Alex to live among the Yanomami, or 'Fierce People.' Overcoming great fear and overwhelming obstacles, Alex witnesses wild and unfamiliar religious practices and quickly learns to hunt alligator and tapir, eat roasted grubs, battle electric caterpillars, fire ants, and lice....An accessible glimpse into the daily life of these isolated rainforest dwellers, a valuable starting place for discussion." -- Kirkus Reviews "This title would be a popular choice for students interested in the environment or the rainforest." -- School Library Journal Note: some of the illustrations in this edition have been revised to make the book suitable for classroom use. About the Setting of Amazon Diary The estimated 15,000 Venezuelan Yanomami Indians inhabiting the tropical rain forest in the state of Amazonas along the border with Brazil are considered by many to be the last large, unacculturated group of tribesmen left on earth. The relative inaccessibility of the area has, in the past, buffered the Yanomami from sustained contact with the outside world. Even today, no roads traverse Yanomami lands and access is only by arduous footpaths, by canoe on rivers leading into the Orinoco/Casquiare drainage system, or by helicopter or short-take-off-and- landing (STOL) aircraft using one of the few grass airstrips in the region. Despite the difficulties of travel, however, contact from the outside occurred increasingly in the past few years through the activities of missionaries, individuals engaged in petroleum and mineral exploration, and military personnel sent to ensure the sovereignty of Venezuelan territory following a virtual invasion of southern Venezuela by thousands of garimpeiros or prospectors. Encounters with the gold miners have been particularly devastating and well publicized in the world press. It is inevitable that contact will occur with increasing frequency as a result of population movements into the area and as a result of pressures as the Yanomami themselves seek goods and services from the outside world. Efforts as the formation of the Upper Orinoco/Casquiare Biosphere Reserve ( a 32,000 square mile homeland designed to preserve traditional ways) may buy time and cushion the collision of the modern world with the world of the Yanomami. It remains to be seen, However, if future administrations will fully embrace former Venezuelan President Carlos Andres Perez's decree that led to the creation of the reserve. Read More