Fish that travel thousands of kilometres, spiders that look like orchids, ants that cut up leaves, lizards, tortoises, monkeys, salamanders, caimans, cicadas … green insects, brown insects, spotted insects. Birds that fly high in the sky, birds that barely lift off the ground. Animals that nobody knows, animals that you never see, animals that live in the river, animals that have many names, animals that look like no other animal.
The Amazon is the region with the greatest biodiversity on our planet and, at the same time, one of the least explored areas. Here, life grows, climbs, jumps, breathes, stretches, fights, flees, sings, growls, swims, flies, ends and begins in a thousand different ways, over and over again.
Every creature is connected to its environment and depends on it for survival. The rainforest needs the eagle, the piranha, the cedar tree, the cicada and every living creature, however small, that inhabits it. We humans need the rainforest too: its future is also our future. This comprehensive illustrated non-fiction book takes us into the wondrous world of the Amazon with its seemingly endless wealth of life. We make our way through the cloud forest, gaze up at the canopy, wander through the thicket of the undergrowth, wade through the floodplains and stand on the banks of the Amazon. Along the way, we encounter more than seventy species of animals and insects – some found nowhere else in the world and for some there is no official name in German.
The Chilean illustrator Loreto Salinas has captured the diversity of the animals’ forms, colours and ways of life with an eye for the finest details. Together with the short literary texts by the Peruvian philosopher and children’s author Micaela Chirif, and the scientific information on each animal by Silvia Lazzarino, the book paints a rich and highly informative picture of the fauna of the Amazon.

The author 

Micaela Chirif was born in Lima in 1973. She studied philosophy in Lima and children's and youth literature in Barcelona. Her literary work moves at the interface of children's literature, poetry and factual topics. She has already received several awards for her books. She received the Premio Hispanoamericano de Poesía para Niños for the Spanish original edition of Das Meer. Micaela Chirif lives in Lima.

The biologist

Silvia Lazzarino (*1987) was born in Italy and has lived in Chile since the age of nine. She is a biologist, researcher and scientific illustrator. Through her work and teaching, she aims to highlight the diversity of life forms in nature and raise awareness of the complexity of our world’s ecological interrelationships.

The illustrator

Loreto Salinas (*1977) was born in Santiago de Chile. She originally studied architecture but has been working as a freelance children’s book illustrator for many years. She is particularly dedicated to depicting flora and fauna, and is committed to conveying the importance and beauty of biodiversity. She has been awarded the Chilean Medalla Colibri and, in Argentina, the Destacado ALIJA.