Vanishing Cultures: Amazon Basin

Economic development, technological growth, and environmental degradation have affected the lives of all people on this planet. Yet modernization has changed the way of life more slowly across generations for some people. In this outstanding book series, Jan Reynolds offers readers a fascinating glimpse into several such societies and describes how families meet their subsistence needs, practice their beliefs, interact in their communities, and live in the elements.To effectively communicate some fairly sophisticated lessons to younger children, the clear narratives each focus on a particular family, and the vivid photographs capture a wealth of interesting information about their activities, clothes, food, and surroundings. Seeing a young aborigines boy pulling an enormous carpet snake out of a log and reading about how the Inuit people survived on a diet consisting only of caribou meat and fat are just a few of the unique experiences that reading this book series will entail.The series has seven books. This book, Amazon Basin, highlights a Yanomama family living in South America's Amazon rain forest.

The Vanishing Culture series is one of the best teacher resources I have found in a very long time. Beautifully illustrated and crafted stories immediately engage the students as they get to know a family in the vanishing culture. I have used the books to explore fundamental needs, inspiring critical thinking by comparing cultures and problem solving as we discussed what we could learn about sustainability from these ancient cultures. They have also been a wonderful resource for both physical and political geography since cultures are represented in varied continents and biomes and inspire contrasts such as the mountains of Nepal to the arid country of outback Australia. There is no better way to bring a culture to life than stories about real people. Each of these books has two - a story of a family beginning with earlier generations and the story of the author's journey into the focus culture.