Maria Estrela is a girl who loves listening to bedtime stories. But tired of hearing the same stories over and over again, she decides to make up a “fantastical tale” of her own, telling the story of how the Terrible Mapinguari of the Amazon, a gigantic, one-eyed monster with a huge mouth in its belly, lost its only eye in the forest, and how the fearless Maria Estrela, riding Esperança, her fabulous winged Boi-Bumbá, sets off on a quest to find the Mapinguari’s lost eye.