The Explorer

Katherine Rundell's The Explorer is a survival adventure for 9 year olds about four children who fall out of the sky into the Amazon.

What happens

Fred is flying back towards Manaus in a little six-seater, still in his school uniform and cricket jumper because his cousin insisted. Behind him are a girl called Lila and her small brother Max, and a blonde girl in an uncomfortable blouse who is determinedly not looking out of the window.

Then the pilot starts to cough. His hand jerks. He cuts the engine, and his head slumps onto the dashboard.

The next thing Fred knows, he's running through burning trees in the dark, shouting for anybody at all. He finds them one at a time, hiding in bushes, scratched and burnt and furious.

The blonde girl introduces herself as Con and warns him that if he calls her Constantia she'll kill him. Lila carries Max on her hip and sings to him in Portuguese. Max is small enough to settle an argument by threatening to wee on somebody (and it works).

So begins one of the best fictional survival stories your reader is likely to find. It is very precise about how you actually stay alive. Which leaves hold water. Which leaves bring you out in a rash. How you weave a roof. Where you look for a place somebody else once thought was safe.

It's also extremely funny, which is the surprise. Con is a magnificent complainer. When they lie down to sleep she tells the other two that if they all die in the night, she's blaming both of them.

A note on the opening. The pilot dies in the first few pages, in front of the children, and they spend the following days hurt, thirsty and genuinely frightened, with no adult coming. There's nothing gruesome, and there's no cruelty in it, but if your reader worries about plane journeys or about being separated from you, this one will find that worry. If they love a story where children turn out to be more capable than anybody expected, it's perfect.

Give the first chapter a try together and you'll know within ten minutes.

What to read next

If they come out of it wanting another child who refuses to accept the obvious, Rooftoppers is here. A baby is found floating in a cello case after a shipwreck, and grows up with a scholar who is certain her mother is still alive.