Rainforest Action Network developed this report and consumer guide to help consumers make environmentally- friendly choices at the bookstore and to encourage publishers and booksell- ers to make more responsible choices about what paper they buy and what books they sell.

WWF has therefore tested a number of children’s books from Southeast Asia for traces of tropical wood. The results are sobering: in 19 out of 51 children’s books tested, significant traces of tropical wood were present. The types of wood found do not typically occur in plantations but rather in natural and tropical forests. Furthermore, extensive destruction of tropical forest by the Indonesian paper industry, now expanding into China, has been a well-known fact for years and continues to be a tragic reality. The logical conclusion is that for those books which were tested positive for tropical wood, with the utmost probability natural tropical forest was destroyed or even cleared.