My vote for Most Extraordinary Children’s Book of the Year.

That said, there were some revolting anomalies in my copy. Pages had been nibbled by leaf-cutter ants, raindrops marred the text. Grubby paw prints muddied the margins. There were smudges of blood and leaf litter. Key details had been redacted. Horrible specimens had been taped to the pages: fish scales, tarantula hair, an ant head, a cicada wing, disgusting larvae. I was sure I’d get malaria just from handling it.

Journey to the Last River is fiction posing as non-fiction. It’s an utterly convincing, compelling journal of a mysterious adventurer chronicling his trek into the Amazon. He’s an artist, and he embellishes his diary with maps, lists, and gorgeous colour-pencil illustrations of the terrain and wildlife.

Scribbles, dirt, and a pull-out map create the illusion that the journal is real. Feathers, twigs, and petals appear to be taped to the pages. There are coffee-rings and drops of blood and pencil shavings. The illustrations are detailed and documentary, yet give the impression of haste and interruption.

He’s not alone. Brazilian scientist and old friend Bibi provides the brains and brawn of the expedition: gathering food, carving paddles, and bushwhacking. Their mission is to find the Last River: a river that doesn’t appear on modern maps...

The landscape format gives huge impact to the double-page spreads. The eye roves across the panorama in an unusual way, revelling in the space. Some pages are portrait-oriented with the text read bottom-up, making the reader grapple with the book, wielding it and exploring the contents in different ways. Every page turned reveals a surprise. Charting my own course through the artwork, maps, caption, and text, I felt the entire reading experience had been reimagined. This book expands the notion of what a children’s book can be.

I particularly liked the unknown adventurer. He’s not the classic hero. He lounges around letting Bibi do the hard work. He has less than noble plans. He’s a weenie when it comes to creepy-crawlies. Will the wilderness change him…?

The journal is packed with wildlife information. The point about how different species are interconnected and interdependent is clearly demonstrated.

Everything about this book is superb: the art, the writing, the production, the concept, the spirit, the message, and the metafiction. It’s dramatic, beautiful, and yucky. Highly recommended.

Beautifully illustrated and beautifully written, this is a lovely children’s book all about an expedition to the Amazon following an unknown map. It’s written as a journal or scrapbook with stunning pictures to accompany the diary entries and explanations of the expedition. There was so much to look at on every page and a good dose of children’s humour throughout. Would highly recommend - would make a lovely gift or a great book to read together. Will definitely be using this for a topic at school.

Beautifully illustrated and a very different style of book. The topic ties in fantastically with those covered by UKS2. I loved reading through this and then flicking back and forth admiring the illustrations once again, and finding details that I'd previously missed.
This would make an amazing addition to any bookshelf.

After "The Lost Book of Adventure" – https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2741882122 – a gorgeous "found" text telling us how to survive in the wilds – we get perhaps what that first book should have been all along. It wore its "this is a field journal from some explorer" ideas so thickly but hardly did anything with a narrative. This is definitely the same hand creating this, and it certainly has a lot more narrative. It concerns a man and his Brazilian friend, as she and he follow a clue discovered in an old manuscript – a map purporting to show a newly-found, unexplored river somewhere in Brazil. Why wasn't it published, and the map's details known to all?

Once again this looks wonderful, with some of the best and most atmospheric nature illustrations and scenery images out there, that really help sell the world of the story. The up-close look at the increasingly desperate mission adds a strong enough drama, too, however unlikely some of it might be. Without giving too much away, there is a kind of moral here – as well as some frankly pointless regret at former, more colonial times. Things aren't perfect then, but they pretty much were what I asked for – something with the alleged status of coming from a mysterious expedition archive, something with that superlative craft in the pics, and something with more of a plot. And there are more such books to come, we're told. There's a lot in all of that to be very positive about – a strong four stars.

This book was absolutely stunning. The art inside was beautiful and the notes and experiences pulled me in.
It was informative, interesting and filled with amazing illustrations.
I highly recommend this book.

While this is billed as a children’s book, I would actually say it’s more a YA or even adult book. The narrator leads readers on a thrilling expedition to an unnamed jungle in the Amazon. The explorer, following a map found in the Royal Geographic Society’s archives is trying to find the river on that map. Someone tried to erase that river from the map and our brave explorer wants to know why. Put together like an old photo album or scrapbook, beautiful watercolors accompany handwritten text, making readers feel like they are on real journey into the unknown. A gorgeous book that I highly recommend to would be explorers and naturalists.

The Lost Book of Adventure was one of my favourite books of 2019 and inspired so many teachers and young writers . This companion book is equally fantastic. The illustrations are incredibly enticing and the tale that accompanies them is exciting and informative. This is a fantastic story written in a diary form of two adventurers heading out into the rainforests in search of an unknown river discovered on a geographical society map. This will be a superb book to use with upper Ks 2 class exploring adventurers and explorers and will inspire some wonderful writing. Teddy Keen and the unknown adventurer have created another captivating winner
Highly recommended and I will certainly be advising colleagues to buy this.