PICTURE BOOK - The Quest for Z: The True Story of Explorer Percy Fawcett and a Lost City in the Amazon by Greg Pizzoli

Illustrated by the author
2017, Viking

Hardcover $17.99

40 pgs.
Nonfiction/Biography

Goodreads rating:  4.14 - 120 ratings

My rating: 5

Endpapers:  Green - Newpapers cut up in the shapes of leaves and vegetation

Illustrations:  "silkscreen, photographic halftones, Zipatone, photocopy machines, newspapers, cut paper, and Photoshop"!

1^st line/s:  "Less than one hundred years ago, maps of the world still included large 'blank spots': distant and dangerous lands that mapmakers and scientists had no yet explored."

My comments:  A fascinating, interesting read, a perfect nonfiction picture book for 3rd and 4th graders, and a great addition to the nonfiction adventurer/explorer genre. Simple illustrations add to the text but do not overpower it.  Mr. Pizzoli doesn't shy away from facts that might be glossed over by other authors, particularly the many deaths that accompany a dangerous profession.  Included are four sidebars with information about The Royal Geographical Society, The Amazon Rain Forest, Mosquitoes, and Famous Explorers, and an Author's Note, afterward, glossary, and resource listing that are all just as interesting as the story.  Diseases spread by mosquitoes kill at least 750,000 people every year! And 20 percent of Earth's oxygen is produced in the Amazon rainforest!  Top Notch.

Goodreads:  British explorer Percy Fawcett believed that hidden deep within the Amazon rainforest was an ancient city, lost for the ages. Most people didn't even believe this city existed. But if Fawcett could find it, he would be rich and famous forever. This is the true story of one man's thrilling, dangerous journey into the jungle, and what he found on his quest for the lost city of Z.

Looking for Jaguar and Other Rain Forest Poems - Susan Katz

POETRY
Illustrator: Lee Christiansen
Published: 2005
For: Anyone interested in rainforest plants and animals
Rating: very nice, 4
Endpapers: Olivey green





In the Flooded Forest

The river carries us to the sky,
Where a tiny catfish spends its life in a tree.
Neon tetras dart among leaves,
And a sting ray ripples beneath a branch.

We paddle through the treetops
Past a colony of dangling, woven nests.
Orchids grow within our grasp,
And a monkey leans from a nearby limb to spy.

Here we see the forest twice.
Banana blossoms kiss their own reflections
A dolphin leaps past a parrot's perch
As we drift between worlds.

Mmmmm. Nice. Nineteen poems about rainforest animals and plants, some in free verse, some rhyming. I enjoy every one of the free verse poems. The rhyming poems don't leave me feeling quite so satisfied:

Walking Tree

More than anything else, I think I'd like
To watch this palm setting out on a hike.

Its long, skinny trunk isn't planted in ground,
So (unlike other trees) it can walk around.

Instead of legs, it grows roots like stilts,
And it edges along as each of them wilts.

Yet I've stood here peering for half a day,
And even the fronds at the top didn't sway.

I can't see it move though I stare and stare,
But ten years from now, It will be over there.

Fascinating information. But her imagery, alliteration, and cool word choices are so much more evident in her free verse.

The pictures cover the full page and are green, green green. The jaguar peeks out from amongh different leaves, The okapi turns back to look at you so you get a full view of it's interesting and very different stripes, the goliath frog looks.....round and big and froggy.

Time for one more poem. Years ago, when I was teaching fourth grade in Maine, I found a picture and explanation of a huge jungle flower that is supposed to smell like rotten meat or dead carcasses. There was a poem and an illustration in this book reminded me of this (and this rhyming, I'm happy to say, worked for me....):

Rafflesia

World's biggest flower, the giant rafflesia
Isn't a plant that tries hard to please ya.
Inside a vine, it grows from a thread
To be three feet across, a speckled bright red,
And sends out the fragrance of something quite dead,
Which gives it the nickname of stinking corpse lily.
It scatters its four million seeds willy-nilly
Till a pale orange cabbage (a bud in disguise)
Bursts through the vine, grows to basketball size
(To the vast admiration of beetles and flies),
And finally opens up with a hiss.
This is a flower you might want to miss.

What Darwin Saw - Rosalyn Schanzer

The Journey That Changed the World
National Geographic Society
For: grades 3/4 and up
48 pgs.
Rating: 5
Published: 2009
Read: Feb. 25, 2009 B&N
Endpapers: Forest Green
Really attractive cover - I'd love a poster of this book, also the "family tree" of the evolutionary theory (p. 39) is poster-worthy

This appears to be a well-researched book. Charles Darwin (1809-1882) set off in 1831, at the age of 22, on a 5-year voyage around the world. He traveled with Captain Roert FitzRoy on The Beagle , obtaining specimens and recording observations for an amazing amount of species that no one in Europe had ever seen. Along the coast of South America, past the tip and up to the Galapagos Islands, across to Tahiti - we are his companions as he smells and survives - riding with gauchos on the pampas, watching volcanos erupt, feeling earthquakes shake, eating exotic cuisine and taking in the world. We see dinosaur bones and giant iguanas and unique shells and exotic flowers.

The last part of the book tells of his arrival back in England, his further studies and writing, his family, and how he shared his reasearch with the world. Pgs. 46-47 show a world map detailing his voyage.

Illustrated beautifully. Written in graphic format, with what looks like his own words - if so he was a great writer, using cool, sophisticated (but understandable) vocabulary. Sidebars with additional information keep the story flowing. Great book - I want to read it again. And even if you find yourself in the midst of the controversy about science vs. faith, this is a wonderful biography of a world-famous scientist.

"Forests and flowers and birds I saw in great perfection. If the eye attempts to follow the flight of a gaudy butterfly, it is arrested by some strange tree or fruit; if watching an insect one forgets it in the stranger flower it is crawling over." Mmm, mmm good.