A River of Dust: How North African Nutrients Nourish the Amazon

(Hardback)

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

I am dust,
the dust of North Africa.
I connect continents.

The dust of the Sahela ribbon of land between the Sahara and the savannahlifts with the harmattan winds each winter season. But this is not just any dust. The Sahel's dust will mix with dust from the Sahara and travel thousands of miles westward, across the African continent and the Atlantic Ocean, to reunite with its unforgotten home deep in the Amazon basin.

Told in the perspective of dust, A River of Dust takes readers on a journey through vibrantly illustrated landscapes, celebrating the power and wonder of Earth's ecosystems, and showing how these tiny particles are in fact key to the health of our planet. Meticulously researched and lushly illustrated, this picture book is a lyrical ode to global interconnectedness and the vital roles that even the smallest play in taking care of our planet.

Author Bio

Jilanne Hoffmann is a children's book author with a BS in Engineering and an MFA in Creative Writing. She has traveled to the Amazon rainforest highlands in Peru, collected the dust of six continents in her shoes, and plans to see the dust swirl in Africa's Sahel and Sahara Desert before she turns to dust. Jilanne lives with her family in San Francisco, California, where dust from China's Gobi Desert flies on the wind, on its way to feed the trees of the High Sierra.

Eugenia Mello is an illustrator and graphic designer from Buenos Aires, Argentina. When she was seven years old, she moved to Costa Rica, where she was surrounded by the most incredible nature. She was deeply impacted by the majestic scenery she saw: enormous leaves, infinite greens, the rainbow colors of the animals, and the myriad of small creatures, from insects to frogs. This experience has shown her that everything on this planet is connected, bound together by invisible ties that we might not see but which are there, keeping everything alive in a delicate but ever-so-strong balance. She has an MFA in Illustration and lives in New York City.