The Globe Defenders by Jonny Daymond
The Globe Defenders Rainforest Rescue by Jonny Daymond
As a child I soaked up adventure stories. Many of them old books like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World and H. Rider Haggard’s King Soloman’s Mines.
Of course, some of these stories hark back to a dark imperial age. But the adventure within them still shines brightly from the pages.
I was given my first TinTin book, Prisoners of the Sun, by my godfather one birthday. Again, I was captivated by the adventure in the story and the theme that links all these books together for me is the journey.
You start somewhere safe. There is a clock ticking, or a TV playing, there may be tea and crumpets, or some other nostalgic, warm thing that makes you think of coziness. Probably an old cat or dog. Then suddenly a mystery unfolds and you have to follow a trail. Across the planet, planes, trains, boats, horses, whatever and finally on foot, deep in an uncharted and dangerous wilderness.
In many ways it didn’t matter what the protagonists were looking for and invariably there would be a happy ending, but the journey itself was the thing.
Still today the journey itself is the thing for me and should always be. If all of us lived our lives as a journey to be enjoyed rather than a tedious way of getting from A to B (or in our case B to D!) perhaps the world would be a better place and we would take more notice along the way.
When I was researching for The Globe Defenders, I was captivated by the fact that there are still many uncontacted and possibly some completely undiscovered communities living deep in the Amazon rainforest. With that discovery the feeling from those adventure stories of my childhood came flooding back. Using my own experiences of visiting the Amazon many years ago I felt able to recreate some of the excitement at the journey I had experienced personally and I hope capture some of the excitement that I felt reading those old stories.
But The Globe Defenders is set in a very different time from the Victorian stories I enjoyed as a child. A time when the reality for the communities of the Amazon region and its flora and fauna is very difficult. Real-life murders are happening in and around the forest. Illegal activity is destroying one of the most precious natural resources on our planet.
Worse still it is not just the Amazon that is under threat, but every precious ecosystem on our earth, every traditional community.
The assumption of the privileged that they can go and take what they want is as alive today as it was in 1885 when H. Rider Haggard’s book was published.
But I hope that the children of today who read my stories will learn to work together like the Globe Defenders do. That they will understand how vital and precious our natural world is and how much we can learn from those who still live in harmony with it. Discover more about Jonny Daymond and the Globe Defenders: https://www.jonnydaymond.com/
