I received a copy of this book through Netgalley. This is my honest review.

This is a story about the trip water takes from the top of a mountain all the way to the ocean, and all the things you can see along the way. It covers animals encountered, changing riverbed characteristics, and surrounding scenery. There were loads of different things to look at and name within the illustrations.

My issue with the book was that it was annoying to read the way it was formatted for digital use, so I'm happy to see, that's not even a purchasing option, because it was honestly kind of awful. Otherwise, the book was very informative and the illustrations really helped to show all the different things one would encounter if they were actually following water from its source to it's end destination. Overall I give The River That Flows Beside Me 4.1875 out of 5 stars.

Beautiful book with beautiful illustrations! My daughters love this book very much. Thank you for granting me this book!

The story takes us on a journey and we follow the river from the mountain until it reaches the ocean. On the way we meet a number of birds, insects and animals that live nearby. It also talks about the importance of protecting out rivers and the impact it can have if we do not.

Wonderful watercolour illustrations throughout the book.
Lovely book to give children an introduction to all types of water including rivers and streams.

Great book to start conversations about ecology as well as a sweet bedtime story.

We loved this book! It is beautiful and so informative. The illustrations and the way the river moves through the pages is just gorgeous. It really helps you understand the journey and the movement of the waterway. It also showcases some of the animals you might find along the river. I highly recommend this book. It worked well for both my Kindergartner and Second Grader.

Flow along with the river from its source high in the mountains to where it empties into the sea. What a fascinating journey it is! You'll pass wilderness areas, farms, and cities on the way, and meet an astonishing array of wildlife. This book is packed with information, and its unusual format is sure to attract interest. This is one you'll want to look at again and again.

It's a fun book on river, where does it flow? From the mountains, the snow melt into a stream, some animals live in the proximity of the stream, and it flows to the river. What people do around the river, and where does it go? From the wilderness to the city, we all need rivers. A beautifully illustrated book, and a fun one where you can follow the water run from the top to the bottom.

Though not quite what I was expecting, I still really enjoyed reading this book. We follow the flow a river until it reaches the ocean, and along the way, we discover all the birds, mammals, insects, that live nearby and in it. We also stumble upon buildings, human activities, etc, with, each time, a few information about these.

The watercoloured illustrations arem beautiful and I genuinely wanted to spot every detail in them.

I found the writing style a little bit too descriptive, however. The cover depicting a little boy, I was hoping for the text to feel more like it was this boy's words.

It's a very interesting book, though it might be a little hard for a kid to read by themselves. It can definitely be a good book to talk about the environment, discover some aspects of nature and wildlife.

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Another thing I wanted to note is that the text is layed out all over the pages, which I personally found a little hard to read at times. But that may also be due to the fact I read a digital version of this book—surely the paper version reads more easily!

What a treat of a book! We are studying rivers later this year and I know that I need to buy a copy of this book. It is filled with detailed information broken up into short, accessible chunks. The illustrations are fabulous and clearly detail the journey from the source to the sea. As an adult, I found this informative and know that my children will too.
I've already got several of Charlotte's other books and my class thoroughly enjoy spreading these out across the floor so that they can read together.

A book I should have been able to love, but that left me really frustrated. This is a pictorial presentation of a fictional river, and we follow it through all possible kinds of landscapes and see it being put to all kinds of uses (dammed, fishing, canyoning, etc) on all of two pages. Well, that's a bit of a lie, obviously – this is one of those concertina books, where the pages have been patched on to each other to make one mahoosive strip. But wile the visuals for this kind of diorama are fine, the presentation is just too dodgy for me to approve. You swan down the upper stretches of the thing, and then come to the giant waterfall at the head of the gorge, and then go back up the page, only to see word of the noise of a waterfall. You what now – we have to break natural reading order and cover both banks at the same time? Well, that's acceptable, but then the dam comes along, and the river just drops off the page. Do we turn up-page once more, and if so why is the bend out of shot, and even if we do that why does the river flood over the edge of our vision a second time? Just a simple bit of care about the presentation would have made this such a better experience – the clarity levels due to poor layout decisions are low here, and no mistake. Apart from that I'd employ the artist at the drop of a hat. A "should have been better" two stars.

Impossible to not love this book, I downloaded it to share with the kids I work with, but upon reading it for myself even, the illustrations are beautiful & everything written & drawn are so well thought-out. I wish I can have this in physical form but it's impressive book for children & adults alike! Thank you NetGalley for providing the eARC of this book.

It's a good book. Suitable for the age group of about five to ten. It can be used for the early stage learners to experience the language. It's wonderful journey along flow of the river as it travels many places.

We’re big fans of the other books in this series including The Street Beneath My Feet, The Skies Above My Eyes, and the Sea Below My Toes. The format allows you to see how a river flows from mountain all the way to the ocean and the changes it makes along the way to the land, the wildlife, and humans, as well as our changes to the water. This is a really great introduction for kids on rivers, creeks, streams, lakes, etc. It is full of information and great illustrations.

Thank you NetGalley and Quarto Publishing Group for the opportunity to review this book prior to publication.

This book is so full of incredible illustrations that show the journey of a river from source to sea. It kept me and my daughters entertained as we explored each page and learned about the various ecosystems and other natural elements coexisting alongside the river.

The River That Floes Beside Me is a nonfiction colourful book that takes the reader on a journey right from the source of the water until it reaches the sea.
I particularly liked the illustrations and the details that added further details to the text - however, it must be considered that the animals/birds etc. are found in America, not in the UK.
It is a great addition to the curriculum and would work in a geography lesson too.

So much detail in this book and the illustrations are amazing. It gives the details of the journey of water from a spring to the sea. Not only that, this book also illustrates what animals are in each part of the river and what activities humans and animals usually carry out around the water. I saw on the ARC form, the illustrations are elongated and don't look like the book on pages, I wonder what the physical book would look like.

Thank you so much Netgalley, Quarto Publishing Group, and Charlotte Guillain for the eARC in exchange for my honest review!

Illustrations are beautiful.
However it’s a little tough to see on the phone. The concept and descriptions are great. Having the wording spread out all over the pages is very help to keep children engaged.

As a primary school teacher, this book would be ideal to support a topic on rivers. Not only does it include a lot of geographical terminology such as oxbow Lake and meandering, it also illustrates the way that rivers impact areas around them, how people make their livelihoods from rivers and also activities and things you can find around rivers. The only reason I haven't given it 5 stars is because I found it hard to read as an e book, and I couldn't find a glossary - which I think would be really useful for children.

Great overview of rivers! I could see this being a great tool for homeschoolers or children who have a particular interest in waterways. I really liked how it followed the length of the River, showing all the features along the way. Very engaging with the way that the illustrations and text flow across the pages.

This is an absolutely beautiful book, weaving together nature, history, civilization, and sports. While placing the river at the center of the book, it is truly inclusive of so many different aspects of rivers and how humans and animals interact with rivers, as well as how the river itself interacts with and changes earth. Not only does this book include history, but it addresses change over time by showing, for example, water wheels and how they became factories along the banks of the river. This book reads like a conversation that I might have with my young children, following several different interwoven topics together. I love that it flows seamlessly from one topic to another, all tied together by the river.

The base concept is very interesting, we follow the flow of water, from the melting of house in high mountains to the canal of a city. Along the way we meet a variety of ecosystems, animals and humans activities or structures related to the river. However there are no additional information about them, just one or two line (if that) on how they relate to the water. The charming watercolor serve this story well.

The arc layout is the form of only two pages in which we see the flowing of a river. I have no idea of how this layout will be transcribed in print. Even though it was pretty and conveyed the flowing of water well, it was also hard to read, hopefully the printed format will fix that. Because of this uncertainty, I'm not rating this book four star, in case the printed format doesn't do justice to what I saw.

The writing was slightly uneven, sometime more poetic sometime more descriptive.
For people interested in this book because of the representation of the black child on the cover, beware, there are no important humans characters in this book, the few we see are very small and not very detailed.