Earth's Vanishing Forests

School Library Journal

Gr 9 Up-- Having travelled to an unspoiled tropical rain forest in the Caribbean and a the devastated temperate one in Washington state, Gallant uses a personal approach that creates a tone of urgency and anguish. He devotes the first third of the book to statistics and specific cases that present a discouraging picture of political shortsightedness and greed. The irreversible damage of deforestation on land, flora and fauna, and people of a region, as well as its global impact are all considered. It is therefore disappointing that the writing is awkward, repetitious, and characterized by stereotypes, cliches, and questionable terminology. There is no anthropological evidence that the migrants from Asia to North America 12,000 years ago were ``bronze-skinned people with mongoloid features.'' To say that ``The two groups (Efe and Lese) have come to depend on one another. . . as surely as other organisms'' is insensitive and condescending. That ``mosquitoes prowl'' and ``. . . termites may chew up your garage'' may be colorful but hardly accurate , and use of ``critter'' is unscientific. Chapter subheadings do not reflect the material contained. Accompanying black-and-white charts, maps, and photographs are adequate, but the captions are at times dated and imprecise. Nations's Tropical Rainforests (Watts, 1988) and Mutel's Tropical Rain Forests (Lerner, 1991) are better sources.-- Meryl Silverstein, Docent, American Museum of Natural History, NY