In the manner of her four other One Day books, George follows Tepui, an Indian boy of the Venezuelan rain forest, and a naturalist who is studying the rich, doomed environment about to be bulldozed and burned for farm land. In a race against time, Tepui and the scientist straggle to discover an unnamed species of butterfly. If one is found, a wealthy industrialist has promised to name it in honor of his daughter and save the forest from destruction. Switching from naturalist to bulldozers, George effectively maintains tension. While the two humans are rather flat, the forest's many other inhabitants (beetles, ants, sloth, birds) are more fully presented. Allen's soft, b&w pencil drawings don't convey the jungle as dramatically as Powzyk's lush watercolors for Tracking Wild Chimpanzees (1988), but are precise and charming, nonetheless. An authentic, well-written introduction to the ecology of an important endangered environment.
