Ultimate Expeditions Rainforest Explorer

It's a sketchbook and an art journal. No wait, it's a photo album and travel guide. Actually, it's all of these and more. This is one beautiful book--for children and adults. The combination of easy-to-read handwritten-style fonts for "diary" entries along with other brief anecdotes, articles, and the stunning illustrations and photographs render this book a visual feast. And that's for starters. Learn about animals such as the jaguar, tapir, coati and more--along with information about climate, habitat, and habits. Five stars plus!

Starting with a letter dated in 1924 we learn that we’re holding a journal that will take us on an expedition into the Amazon. This notebook showcases amazing animals and exotic places that tap into our adventurous side.

Pages of animal facts are graced with beautiful illustrations, eye catching photographs and maps to help us see where these gorgeous creatures thrive. We learn about their living, eating, sleeping habits and more as they are organized in a documentary style as if this was a real journal kept by a real explorer.

It’s perfect for kids who love animals and want to explore more of the world. It’s easy to read, understand and enjoy for the young and young at heart.

A lovely book for children. The illustrations are clear and beautiful. Will use in the classroom.

wildlife in rain forest with colourful illustrations........

This is a great book that focusses around a journal and it takes us on an expedition into the Amazon. The book has a lot of lovely images and some really fun animal facts. The highlight for me has to me the photographs. Very easy to read and follow and highly recommended for kids (and adults) who love animals as they will certainly enjoy this one.

In 1924, a jungle explorer went into the Amazon, keeping a journal of the animals he encountered for a display at the museum that paid for his expedition.
Each page contains diary entries, a big photo of the animal in question, a few small ones, drawings, and fun facts, such as the jaguar having the strongest teeth of any cat.
The tapir always scores high on the weirdness scale, especially the fact they can hold their breath underwater for a good ten minutes. His encounter with a river dolphin is hilarious. And if you’ve ever wondered about Amazonian bats, they’re just as disgusting as any others.
Have to say, though, the photos, especially the dark ones, are too sharp to have been made with 1920s photographic technology. And some of the drawings have captions in small italics that are difficult to read.
3.5 pushed up to 4/5

***This book was reviewed for Quarto Press via Netgalley

Dive into the field journal of Harold Bennington, on expedition for the Charles Natural History Museum, and explore the wealth of the Amazon. Traverse the largest rainforest on earth and learn about the mighty jaguar, whose jaws can crack a bowling ball, the colorful macaw, one of the world’s most intelligent birds, tapir, with its unusual snoot, and many other Amazonian critters!

The artwork and layout of this book is a beautiful canvas painted with the likenesses of the many jungle denizens. I love that the field journal included 'taped in’ photos, and other items like macaw feathers and caiman scales. Many of the illustrations depict jungle scenes such as a macaw flock warning off a python invading their nest, and a ma and baby tapir foraging for supper. Each animal had a four page spread, with plenty of neat facts about habitat, lifestyle, special features, and diet. All of my cubs enjoyed this lovely book. I'm hoping there are more in the series we can get!

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Finally, Sophie and her son read Ultimate Expeditions: Rain Forest Explorer by Nancy Honovich together. She requested the book because her son’s second-grade class are studying the rainforest and she hoped the book might provide some useful information for homework assignments.

Rain Forest Explorer ended up being a very useful book indeed, as well as being a delight to look at. The book blends fact and fiction by following the adventures of Harold Bennington, a fictional explorer who spent several weeks on a museum-funded expedition into the rainforest during the 1920s with his guide Don Gilberto. The book is designed to look like Harold’s expedition diary and includes information about the animals he and Don encountered during their trip, written in a personal manner, rather than as dry facts. Each creature receives two double-page spreads filled with illustrations, photos which appear to have been taped to the page, a map of where the animal was encountered, and notes about appearance, behavior, and more. The book included a wide variety of rainforest creatures including jaguars, scarlet macaws, squirrel monkeys, tapirs, and river dolphins.

The book is one of a series of Ultimate Expeditions books. Dinosaur Hunter and Mythological Beasts are out now, and Deep Sea Diver is due to be released in summer 2018. Each of the books also include instructions and materials to make a 3D model of the eight animals featured; however, as we received a digital copy of Rain Forest Explorer, we we unable to try this part out.

Rain Forest Explorer is a beautiful book that will engage children via its layout and interactivity. The inclusion of models and the colorful layouts will make these books ideal Christmas gifts for children curious about animals modern, ancient, and fantastical.

My students will enjoy this book, especially the journal-style pictures and writing which provide real information about these amazing rainforest animals. The "I was there" style journal is a fun change from "regular" nonfiction about rainforest animals.