Book notes: The Explorer

By Katherine Rundell.

I got a recommendation for this book from my daughter while looking for a fiction book in the house.

Tween fiction. 4 kids (three of them around 12 years old and one 5 year old) get stranded in the amazon jungle after their flight crashes. They survive by using their wits. There is some teamwork and personal growth. The story really takes off in the middle when they find another person (“the explorer”). It’s a fun read.

You learn a few tricks about jungle survival:

• Eat grubs by cooking them with a cocoa pod. I couldn’t find anyone actually doing this on the Internet.
• Lure tarantulas out of their hole with a stick. In the book they are delicious but I’m seeing mixed reviews on the Internet.
• Watch out for piranha but they don’t seem to be that dangerous in real life for humans.
• Bullet ants… it looks like the sting is painful (like getting shot with a bullet) but not deadly.
• Small eye-licking bees. The closest I could find to this is lisotrigona, which is a small sting-less bee in Thailand that does seem to like to lick sweat (and eyes).
• Vampire bats can give you rabies but not kill you.
• Myiasis could be the maggot infestation the explorer was referring to.