Book Review The Explorer

The Explorer by Katherine Rundell

My First Impressions

I thought The Explorer was very… surprising. I thought they were going to stay in the rainforest and build up a utopia, but that was not a part of the plot. It was not funny in the end, rather it was serious and also quite happy.

I read it in one sitting, which is normal for me. It took about one hour to get through but I read pretty quickly. I will reread it for sure – I almost always read books a second (or third) time to enjoy them even more. And I get to know the characters better that way.

The Story (an Overview)

It’s about four kids named Max, Lila, Fred, and Con, who crash land in the rainforest and don’t know how to get home. They follow a map to an explorer who helps them get home, and along the way they meet tarantulas, caiman, piranha, dolphins, bullet ants, sloths, monkeys, bees, and more.

What I like about “The Explorer”

The Explorer was about kids, not adults, and there were a lot of animals, which I liked. (Except the scary ones like piranha and tarantulas. Also, they ATE the tarantulas! ATE!)

There is a character name Lila and she has a pet sloth named Abacaxi (cool name!). Baca for short. That is what my older sister Maxine calls her grandfather. It’s Italian. And Abacaxi is the Portuguese name for pineapple. There you go – you have learned two new things today. You are welcome!

So – I liked this Abacaxi because he is a cute sloth – how many times do you get to know a sloth in a book? Huh? Not many times so enjoy getting to know this one.

An Excerpt

“But soon he began too slow. There was so much to look at: So much that was strange, so much that was new and vast and so very palpably alive. The trees dipped down their branches, laden with leaves broad enough to sew into trousers. He passed a tree with a vast termite nest, as big as a bathtub, growing around it. He gave it a wide berth.”

How it could have been better

Well, the explorer who helped the kids get home could have been a little less threatening. I mean, come on! He said he’d rip off their toes and feed them to his vulture, put snakes in their hair, and cut off their ears! Seriously!

But, I guess that was the whole point of him, wasn’t it. He crash landed a plane, after all, so maybe it is o.k. for him to be a tad grumpy.

How Many Stars (1 – 5)

I’d give this book four stars. I’d definitely recommend it because this author has written a lot of good books including “The Good Thieves,” “Rooftoppers,” and a few others that I have read. Glad that Literati sent this one because I had not heard of it before.