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In Nathalia Holt’s last book (the best -selling author of “Rise of the Rocket Girls”), two children of Theodore Roosevelt went to China in a search to find a mythical creature: the giant panda.

“The beast in the clouds” (Atria/One Signal) recounts the treacherous walk of the brothers and examines the implications that their expedition raised towards these gentle animals.

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“The cloud beast” by Nathalia Holt

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Prologue

Two brothers softened a map on the table in front of them. The land they were examining was colored in vegetables, brown and gray. Running through the map, like the stripes of a tiger, were irregular white spots. Each white space represented the unknown, a map section is not yet planned and did not explore. The line dotted with a river, unknown into small text, cuts the white. It was 1928 and the world was still a Wonder chess board, the continents assigned imperfectly. Ted and Kermit Roosevelt, the two older children of former President Theodore Roosevelt, were planning an adventure. Although maps of a wide range of cartographers consulted, including those drawn in China, the unexplored regions persisted. The vast Asian continent mottled with Blanco spoke with them. The world was full of explorers, all examining maps like those owned by the Roosevelts. There was an intoxicating and optimistic sensation that persisted with each other. No one could be sure which mountain was the highest on Earth or what ditches in the deepest ocean. Each expedition had the possibility of making its world -fame explorers.

The 1920s was a decade of discovery, since groups of scientists, adventurers and hunters ventured in the desert to fill the museum collections. They succeeded: every great mammal on Earth had been reached and their bodies mounted on exhibitions, except one.

The Roosevelts wanted this animal so sharply that they could barely talk about him among them, much less any other person. “We did not let our close friends know,” Ted wrote about his shared purpose. Some dreams sound too wild when talking out loud. The animal covered by the Roosevelt brothers looked like any other species in the world. It was a black and white bear so weird that many people did not believe it was real. This legendary creature was called Giant Panda. The rumors swelled over the mysterious animal. No one, not even the naturalists who had worked in China all their lives, could say precisely where the creature lived, what ate or how he behaved.

Brown, black and polar bears had never been in doubt among humans. Even polar bears, although they lived in the remote controls of the Arctic, were well known and had remained in zoos for thousands of years. In Egypt, King Ptolemy II had a polar bear in his zoo in Alexandria already in 285 a. C. In 1252, a polar bear was part of the extensive collection of beasts of the Torre de la Torre de London.

However, the same could not be said of the panda bear. Even among those who live in the Republic of China, which covers 7.7 percent of the land mass of the earth, few had seen the creature. Dozens of names were used to describe what could be a panda. In different dialects they called him “stained bear”, “giant bear”, “white bear” and “bamboo bear”, although no one could be sure that all these different names referred to the same species. There were probable references to giant panda in Chinese literature already in the third century, although the descriptions were mythical, describing yellow and black creatures that ate copper and iron. “While there are tempting stories that imply that a Chinese emperor or another knew everything about Panda,” an author wrote, “there is a great mystery. Why is there a single interpretation of this endearing beast in any of the illustrated natural stories of imperial China?”

From “The Beast in the Clouds” by Nathalia Holt, published by Atria/One Signal, a Simon & Schuster printing press. Copyright (c) 2025 by Nathalia Holt. All rights reserved.

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“The cloud beast” by Nathalia Holt

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For more information:

• “The Beast in the Clouds: the mortal search for the Roosevelt brothers to find the mythical giant panda” by Nathalia Holt (Atria/One Signal), in hardcover formats, ebook and audio
• Nathaliaholt.com

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