Matt Haig’s Evie in the Jungle is an Amazon adventure for 11 year olds, starring a girl who hears every thought a passing animal has.<\/p>\n
Evie Navarro can talk to animals with her mind. Scientists have given it a very long official name. Everybody else has given her a crowd of reporters on the doorstep who shout questions at her before she has had breakfast.<\/p>\n
She has stopped enjoying any of it. Strangers online call her a freak, so she has been hiding in her bedroom with a book about the animals of the Amazon, written by a biologist working out in Peru.<\/p>\n
So when her dad says they need to get away, Evie knows where she wants to go.<\/p>\n
Peru, not Brazil. Her mum died in the Brazilian rainforest when Evie was little, and that is where the dreams she can barely remember come from. Her dad worries. Her dad always worries. Her dog Scruff is delighted to be sent to Granny Flora’s, where there is pizza.<\/p>\n
The middle of this book is a proper holiday and it is lovely. A sticky fried dumpling called tacu tacu. A local fizzy drink that tastes like melted ice cream. A grumpy giant otter. An electric eel whose thoughts zap about so fast they give Evie a headache.<\/p>\n
Then six pink river dolphins burst out of the water at once, which the boat’s captain says almost never happens. They race the boat. They bicker about whether turtles are delicious or just get stuck in your teeth. Evie feeds them her lunch and gets told off.<\/p>\n
What makes the book more than a nice trip is what Evie keeps seeing from the deck. Dead ground where the forest used to be. Smoke where developers have set fires. Then a sloth on a branch above the water, too frightened to move, with the fire coming closer, and Evie can feel its fear as though it were her own.<\/p>\n
The mother’s death is backstory rather than something that happens in the story, and it comes up early and gently. Even so, this is a book where animals are in real danger and the damage to the rainforest is shown honestly rather than softened. A child who takes that to heart may need to talk about it. A child who already cares about this stuff will come away fired up.<\/p>\n
For another child alone in the Amazon, there is The Explorer. That one begins with a plane going down over the river and four children walking out of the wreck, so it is the tougher read of the two.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Matt Haig’s Evie in the Jungle is an Amazon adventure for 11 year olds, starring a girl who hears every thought a passing animal has. Evie Navarro can talk to animals with her mind. Scientists have given it a very long official name. Everybody else has given her a crowd of reporters on the doorstep […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":11036,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"lr_next_read_post_id":9020,"lr_next_read_anchor":"The Explorer","lr_seo_hook":"Six pink dolphins, a burning forest and a girl who talks to animals."},"book_tag":[1045],"age_group":[28],"book_type":[1048],"book_author":[696],"class_list":["post-7358","our-books","type-our-books","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","book_tag-adventure-books","age_group-books-for-11-year-olds","book_type-free","book_author-matt-haig"],"yoast_title":"Evie in the Jungle by Matt Haig | Read free on Little Reads","yoast_metadesc":"Six pink dolphins, a burning forest and a girl who talks to animals. For ages 11+. Read this book free in the Little Reads app. 3,000+ books.","acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n