cover image Jungle Adventure: A Pop-Up Vacation

Jungle Adventure: A Pop-Up Vacation

Helen Balmer. Simon & Schuster, $14 (0pp) ISBN 978-0-671-86768-3

Balmer, an English paper engineer, scores a smashing success in her first solo children's pop-up. Using a deadpan delivery, she recounts a trip taken by a boy and his grandfather through a jungle, where they unwittingly evade any number of disasters. On this story she lavishes a full complement of truly ingenious paper-engineering feats. Readers can see boy and Gramps ride, respectively, giraffe and elephant; help Gramps dangle his foot in the river--and lift it back out, just in time to escape the jaws of an alligator (which lunges by virtue of a pull-tab); slide the intrepid travelers along a rope ladder (where they remain just out of reach of a fork-tongued snake); etc. Balmer throws in many lift-the-flap and pull-tab surprises that intensify the atmosphere: a tarantula hides under a lift-the-flap frond; a crab pops out behind a flap camouflaged as an underwater bush; a bear pokes his nose in and out of a beehive. Her generously packed book is certain to demonstrate that reading itself can be an adventure. Ages 2-4. (Aug.)