OVER AND UNDER THE RAINFOREST – BOOK REVIEW

By Kate Messner with art by Christopher Silas Neal

“Into the rainforest we hike, through slivers of sunlight and dripping-wet leaves.”

When we’re not travelling the world, we love to travel through our books – so we were super excited about getting Over and Under the Rainforest! It’s a delightful and enchanting book, and a lovely mix – part story, part educational guided tour of what you’ll find in the rainforest in Costa Rica! The book somehow manages to really draw you in – you can almost feel the dampness and leafy foliage closing in around you as you turn the pages! Just brilliant!

The main focus of the book is the wildlife, and there are so many different animals mentioned – some we’d heard of, but also quite a few we hadn’t. It’s very educational considering it’s technically a story book, and has prompted the kids to do quite a bit of research! (And has also prompted the kids asking when we can take a trip to Costa Rica!!!) Everything from tiny ants to crocodiles are in there. Mr7 was delighted that sloths were included – they’re one of his favourite animals! He was less than impressed at the page on the Golden Orb Spider though!!! It’s only an illustration, but buyer beware if you or your little one is scared of spiders! Miss11 liked the blue jeans poison dart frog – just because of its name! – and had to google some videos of the green basilisk after we’d finished, because she couldn’t quite believe it could walk on water!!!

The illustrations in the book are just beautiful! Just about every page is covered in swathes of gorgeous, calming, leafy greens to accompany all the different animals, and they really evoke a feeling of being right there in the rainforest! There’s a lovely section at the back, almost like a glossary, that gives you more information about all the different creatures, along with a small illustration of each one. (For some reason, Mr7 was very interested in the part on the spider here, and was absolutely fine with it!) It’s very useful for the creatures you’ve never heard of, and boosts the educational factor even more!

Over and Under the Rainforest is really informative, and the kids really loved it. It’s incredible how the book manages to give you such a feel of being there, and though it’s a simple storyline, there was so much knowledge there, it held the kids’ interest really well. We’ll definitely be on the lookout for more books in this series!

Over and Under the Rainforest can be found at Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com

*We were kindly gifted our copy of Over and Under the Rainforest by the lovely people at Abrams and Chronicle Books. Thank you so much Abrams and Chronicle!