Alexander's Amazon Adventures will captivate young readers and broaden their horizons.

As humans living under the same sun and the same moon, on Planet Earth, we don't all live the same way. Life for a child in the cities of North America is vastly different than it is growing up in the jungle that surrounds the Amazon River in South America.

That's where Paul Gopal grew up, in a small village in Guyana, in the 1950s. He's now the father of two children, Christina and Alexander, and he has just published a new book, Alexander's Amazon Adventures, that recalls his growing-up years. Alexander's Amazon Adventures is a book written for youngsters, but it is also a book written with a singular purpose in mind -- to make people more aware of their natural world and the increasing threat to the planet's environment and its wildlife.

This book will delight youngsters because it tells stories that will take them by surprise. The central characters in Alexander's Amazon Adventures are the young Alexander and his grandfather Skipper, who runs a sawmill in the Guyanese village of Clemwood. Skipper takes young Alexander fishing -- and they return from a day on the water with a 300-pound Arapaima, the largest scaled, freshwater fish in the world.

One day, Alexander was gathering chicken eggs, only to discover that a chicken and a couple of ducks were missed from the yard. He and his mother Barbara then discovered that a giant anaconda snake had made a new home in a pile of lumber beneath their house. Grandfather Skipper and his friends captured the snake and took it up-river to release it.
Then, there is the story of Alexander's pet capybara named Pearl, which was attacked one day by a jaguar. Once again, it was Skipper to the rescue, capturing the jaguar and releasing it well away from the village. The capybara is the largest rodent on Earth and can weigh as much as 66 pounds.

And finally, there is the tale of Alexander's Aunt Betty, who was bitten one day by a bushmaster, a highly venomous snake. Her life was saved thanks to the efforts of Skipper, Alexander and a local medicine man.

All of these are stories that will captivate young readers and broaden their horizons. What makes this book even more worthwhile is that these are tales that actually happened to a young child -- in a part of the world far from the cities and the skyscrapers of North America.