When the Monkeys Came Back

Years after the jungle in her Costa Rica valley is cut down, Don+a1a Marta persuades her husband to give her a piece of land on which she plants trees that she and descendants care for until they grow into a forest and the monkeys that had once lived there return.

Grade 1-4-When she was a girl in Costa Rica, Do?a Marta always heard the howler monkeys in the hillside forest announce the coming of day and night. The valley's quiet ways were altered with the arrival of cars, but her father's decision to sell the trees changed the area even more. Within five years, the trees-and the monkeys-had disappeared. Years later, after her father's death, Do?a Marta persuades her husband to let her use the hillside land, and slowly, patiently, she plants and waters her seedlings and, with her children's help, she restores the forest. Franklin's text has a wonderful cadence, with subtle repetitions that underscore the links of present and past. Similarly, Roth's colorful paintings reveal not only the landscape's beauty but also the length of time such projects require. Watercolor silhouettes of a monkey above the blocks of text serve as a constant visual reminder of the woman's motivation. Unlike picture books that offer simple solutions to ecological destruction, Franklin's book reveals the years of hard work required to reverse the results of swift destruction of animal habitats. Over the course of the story, Do?a Marta ages from a girl to a weathered, white-haired but strong woman. That she lives to see the return of the monkeys is a richly deserved and satisfying ending.
Kathy Piehl, Mankato State University, MN
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Ages 5-8. Shrieking, barking, hooting, and howling, the howler monkeys announced the changing of night into day and day into night with a noise "like thunder in the trees." Except for when the monkeys called, the Costa Rican valley where Marta grew up was a quiet, peaceful place. But cars chugged into the valley, followed by men from the city who offered Marta's father lots of money for permission to cut the trees from the mountainside. And when nothing was left of the forest but stumps and brush, the monkeys slipped away. With a piece of land that her husband gives her (even though it goes against custom for women to own land), Marta works to bring back the forest for the monkeys. She plants and tends trees and teaches each of her 11 children, in turn, to do the same. Finally, when Do{¤}na Marta is an old woman, her trees touch the sky, and lying awake in bed, she hears again the music that she has missed for 56 long years, the sound of monkeys waking the world. Similar to Virginia Lee Burton's classic The Little House, this story resonates with the rhythms of change, remembering, and restoration, and it will engender in children a wondrous response of recognition. While washes of leaping shadow monkeys haunt the text, Roth's deft illustrations capture the vision of Marta's rain forest valley and her lifelong dream to bring the monkeys back. The illustrator of Levine's Pearl Moscowitz's Last Stand (1993), Roth infuses his watercolors with a lively sense of place and crafts characters with easy-to-read personalities and motivations. Strong in story and vision, this picture book has a grace that will ground it in the hearts of readers and listeners alike. Annie Ayres