“From its opening pages, this engaging children’s book sets the scene of a world almost unimaginable in the 21st century, a lush, restive, tropical world alive with the spirits of animals and plants.

It begins inside a Yanomami dwelling. A shaman dances around a fire in the cobalt light, intent on a healing ritual. Yarima, a sick baby girl, lays in her mother’s hammock nearby. Meanwhile her 13-year-old brother, Namowë, waits in anticipation of the next days’ hunting trip, his first. But it is not to be.

Instead, he embarks on a journey to find the Luminous Plant, which the village shaman does not possess, in order to save his sister. With a nod to Dorothy’s journey to Emerald City in the Wizard of Oz, Namowë’s trip to Jaguar Mountain is punctuated by encounters with everything from electric eels, bats, owls, otters, a macaw, a dragon-fly bird and a monkey — some irascible, others sarcastic, all animated and talkative.

Like the best ‘initiation’ tales, Amazon Rainforest Magic is fraught with dangers that test our hero’s mettle. It is also a ‘head’s up’ to the rapidly vanishing rain forests of the planet.

Barbara Crane Navarro presents a place and a culture she knows firsthand, having spent considerable time among the Yanomami. Her simple yet sophisticated color drawings pull the reader into this marvelous world where a rich culture continues, at least for the moment, as it has for thousands of years.”

Review by B. Alexandra Szerlip

More information about the book series is here:

“Amazon Rainforest Magic” et “La Magie de l’Amazonie” y “La Magia de la Amazonia” ESPAÑOL – ENGLISH – FRANÇAIS – Libros de aventuras fantásticas para niños – Cuentos de la vida de los Yanomami en la selva amazónica – para edades de 8 a 12

Yanomami boy’s surprise friend in the jungle!

Sometimes we miss the most beautiful moments – DON’T MISS THIS ONE! 

A 38 second film with Namowë, a Yanomami boy in the Alto Orinoco region, Amazonas, Venezuela 

Yanomami boy’s surprise friend in the jungle is an excerpt of a film by Barbara Crane Navarro of instants of daily life of a Yanomami community in the Amazon Rainforest of Venezuela made to accompany the children’s book series: “Amazon Rainforest Magic” “La Magie de l’Amazonie” and “La Magia de la Amazonia”