Customer Reviews

A Genuine and Moste Authentic Guide: Explorer: A Daring Guide for Young Adventurers (Genuine & Moste Authentic Guides)

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This book has an old-fashioned feel with plenty of bonuses like letters, pop-ups and pull-outs (somewhat fragile!). It would appeal to anybody, boy or girl who likes the idea of exploring or camping.

I recommend 6 yrs and up because the extras allow a child to 'grow into it'. The layout is fun and fact-filled with a variety of appealing topics from getting ready to explore (suggested tool kit), past expeditions in the jungle, arctic, desert etc... and how to survive. The book appeals to the imagination.

Explorer - a Daring Guide for Young Adventurers would make a nice complement to the Daring Book for Girls or the Dangerous Book for Boys, though it stands on its own nicely.

My son loves exploring and this book had a lot of information. Since he is 5, we read parts of each page. It was also a great way to talk about exploration in an historical perspective (in the same vein as Curious George, etc.)

A reviewer mentions below that this book is dangerous, and though I do agree with the reviewer that Henry Morton Stanley was not a benign colonizer, he was however an intrepid explorer. This book should be read in that spirit of embracing the wonders of exploration, and acknowledging some of the great explorers, such as Christopher Columbus, Vasco Da Gama, and Howard Carter, amongst others. The book itself is written with young explorers in mind - it covers major aspects of early exploration which is quite far removed from our over-dependence on modern hi-tech gadgets these days. The book covers basics of exploration in the past:
An Explorer's Tool Kit: Being Prepared
Lost Treasures: Ideas for Exploration - contains a vivid pop-up of the Lost city of El Dorado
Training for Adventure: Steps to Success
Across the Oceans: Sailing the Seven Seas - has full-color pictures of the sailing vessels of various famous explorers, such as Charles Darwin's Beagle and Roald Amundsen's Fram
Beneath the Sea: Down into the Deep - contains an interesting fold-out section on diving aids used in the early days
Into the Jungle: A Rain Forest Adventure - this is the one that has excerpts of Stanley's diary
Exploring a Tomb: The Lure of Lost Civilizations -contains a pop-up of an Egyptian tomb containing a mummmy
Polar Quest: Race to the Antarctic
Desert Adventures: Danger among the Sands
Conquering Mountains: High-Altitude Exploration
Survival Tips: Staying Alive
Famous Explorers: The Successful Few [Marco Polo, Ferdinand Magellan, Lewis and Clark, Captain Cook, the Vikings]
Good-Bye and Good Luck!

Conclusion - as we have learned from history, not all of the early explorers had benign intentions. However, this book focuses on the idea of exploration, and of the tools needed and used for this purpose, covering the basics and the various parts of the world that have attracted explorers time and again. In that spirit of promoting the wonders of exploration, I think this book succeeds quite well.

Great little book FULL of details and little fun stuff. However my boys quickly lost pieses to it, bent pop-ups, and tore off the small flaps that hide some of the content.

Suggested for older kids that do not destroy their books.

I don't believe in book banning, but if I did, I would recommend this one for the top of the list. This book embodies a dangerous form of persistent racism and ethnocentrism by romantically detailing acts of European conquest while ignoring the subsequent enslavement of native populations, as well as the cultural, social and environmental destruction that resulted from the once glorified dominant narrative of "Exploration."

Not once, throughout all the pages of this book, are the horrendous results of colonization mentioned. In fact, explorers, such as Henry Morton Stanley, who were directly responsible for the atrocities committed by King Leopold II in the Congo, are romanticized and touted as "heroic."

My only recommendation for this book is that it be used in as an example of Colonial nostalgia in a postcolonial high school or university course. I cannot believe that this book was published in 2007 and must say: "Shame on Candlewick Publishers for offering this book to children."

Read with caution.