The Great Kapok Tree by Lynne Cherry, 1990.

The book begins with a letter from the author, saying that she wrote the book in order to explain to people the importance of rain forests and why they should be preserved.

Two men are walking through a rain forest. They are there to cut down the trees (probably for farming). The animals watch as one of the men begins chopping at a great Kapok tree with his axe. It’s hard work, and before the man gets very far with his chopping, he has to stop and rest.

As the man sleeps, the animals come to him and whisper to him not to chop the tree down. The boa constrictor tells him that his ancestors have lived there for generations. The monkeys tell him that if he chops all the trees down, there will be no tree roots to hold the soil in place, and it will wash away, eventually changing the land into a desert. The birds are worried because people use fire to help clear the forest, and it destroys everything. All of the animals are worried about where they will live and what they will eat if the forest disappears.

The animals also point out to the man that destroying this forest would also be destroying his own future and that of his children. The forest produces oxygen for humans to breathe.

Finally, a human child from the Yanomamo tribe that lives in the forest asks the man to wake up and look at him and all the animals. The man is startled and amazed by what he sees. He thinks about continuing his work, but seeing the child and all of the animals staring at him silently, hoping that he won’t, he decides that he can’t bring himself to do it and leaves.

I don’t remember reading this book when I was a kid, but I remember other stories very much like it.  Environmental issues like this were common topics of discussion when I was in elementary school during the early 1990s.  One of the movies of my childhood, FernGully, came out in 1992, a couple of years after this book was first published.  That movie is also based on a book, although it has even more fantasy elements than this story, which has talking animals.  Both of these stories demonstrate how many children during the 1990s were raised to be environmentally aware.

This is a Reading Rainbow Book. It is currently available online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).