Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Sep 2017
336 pages
Genre: Thrillers
Publication Information
From Boston Globe–Horn Book Award winner Katherine Rundell comes an exciting new novel about a group of kids who must survive in the Amazon after their plane crashes.
Fred, Con, Lila, and Max are on their way back to England from Manaus when the plane they're on crashes and the pilot dies upon landing. For days they survive alone, until Fred finds a map that leads them to a ruined city, and to a secret.
Costa Book Awards, 2017
"Starred Review. Fans of survival stories like Hatchet and My Side of the Mountain are an ideal audience for this fast-paced escapade with a lush and captivating setting." - Publishers Weekly
"Starred Review. Elegant descriptive passages and lyrical writing...enhance but also occasionally jar the fast-paced, often gritty narrative...Fans of adventure novels such as Gary Paulsen's Hatchet or Willard Price's 'Adventure' series (which are also favorites of Rundell) will enjoy this jam-packed survival story." - School Library Journal
"A tropical action-filled adventure with heart." - Kirkus Reviews
"The Explorer is perfectly suited to its middle-grade audience. It is a book to kindle imaginations. And though it emphasizes the fantastic otherness of the jungle in a way that feels almost antique, young readers will finish it with an impression of the grandeur of the natural world." - The New York Times Book Review
This information about The Explorer was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Photo: Blair Mowat
Katherine Rundell is the author of Rooftoppers, Cartwheeling in Thunderstorms (a Boston Globe–Horn Book Award winner), The Wolf Wilder, The Explorer, and The Good Thieves. She grew up in Zimbabwe, Brussels, and London, and is currently a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. She begins each day with a cartwheel and believes that reading is almost exactly the same as cartwheeling: it turns the world upside down and leaves you breathless. In her spare time, she enjoys walking on tightropes and trespassing on the rooftops of Oxford colleges.
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