We head into the Jungle for Katherine Rundell’s adventure story, The Explorer. Just watch out for the spiders. And the snakes. And the piranha…
The Explorer – the blurb
From his seat in the tiny aeroplane, Fred watches as the mysteries of the Amazon jungle pass by below him. He has always dreamed of becoming an explorer, of making history and of reading his name amongst the lists of great discoveries. If only he could land and look about him.
As the plane crashes into the canopy, Fred is suddenly left without a choice. He and the three other children may be alive, but the jungle is a vast, untamed place. With no hope of rescue, the chance of getting home feels impossibly small.
Except, it seems, someone has been there before them.
Swiss Family Robinson
Swiss Family Robinson was one of my favorite books as a child and The Explorer immediately made me reminisce about it. Except there are no adults and the Jungle seems infinitely more dangerous than the beach-side tree house complete with dining table the Robinsons made home. Rundell doesn’t hold back in describing the dangers the children face. I don’t think I would have fared better than them and didn’t know half of the things they did.
You could book club that
The Explorers is a perfect book for book club. I’m just annoyed I didn’t pick it to be one. For a start, there is all that jungle to talk about, the Mayan sites, and the animals. You could get children building a shelter, starting a fire (strictly supervised of course) and cooking food on sticks. There are all the real explorers you could investigate and the names of Portuguese fruit. The potential for extra book related activities is endless.
A proper adventure story
But on top of that Rundell also writes brilliantly. The language used was beautiful “the light inside was a dark green, an underwater, sunken-treasure color.” There is humour, I chuckled when reading about psychoanalysing piranha (not piranhas!) There is emotion: I just loved the line “I came at love like a child making ‘up’ arms. I worked out how to blink her name in Morse code”. Hmm blinking your name in Morse code, also a good book club activity! Yes the reveal was a little convenient but this is the only negative I am going to utter as it all linked together beautifully.
It’s a proper adventure story harking to days gone past, yet it doesn’t feel dated in the slightest. There is no magic that children’s adventure stories now often seem to contain, just outright wildness and I loved it. I also genuinely think children will and am passing it to my eldest as we speak.
If you like adventure stories have a try of author Dan Smith’s books. She Wolf or Below Zero are both similar to The Explorer but with totally different settings. (Viking Northumberland and the Antarctic respectively).
