Walking Through the Jungle

Product Description
A small child creeps, runs, leaps, swings and finally wades through the jungle. As he goes he hears various animal noises, the perpetrators of which are revealed on the following page. The torn-paper collage illustrations offer an accompaniment to this traditional rhyme.

Publishers Weekly
Part nursery rhyme, part guessing game, Lacome’s playful book of paper collages conducts an imaginary jungle tour. “Walking through the jungle, / What do you see? / Do you hear a noise? / What could it be?” reads the text on the first spread, which shows a toddler against a blank background contemplating the sound “ssssss.” Turn the page, and that sibilant sound can be traced to a snake looping its way through a lush tropical wilderness. Illustrations integrate the foreign and the familiar (for example, some trees and vines sport heart-shaped leaves), and subtle variations in color disguise the frequent starkness of the cut-paper medium. Clean patterns and benevolent depictions of the animals balance the impact of Lacome’s deep, dramatic palette and dense compositions–while her jungle teems with exotica, it is never chaotic. Layout and pacing are effectively varied, likely to keep vicarious jungle-goers on their toes. Ages 2-up. (Mar.)

School Library Journal
PreS-K-A young child walks, stomps, creeps, and leaps through the jungle to such questions as, “What do you see?” “Can you hear a noise?” and “What can it be?” answered by “Over there! An elephant” (or monkey or lion). Is he following me?” Readers first see a double-paged spread, text on the left, the toddler performing the action described on the right. Animal sounds lead him through the next spreads, which have the answers and a page-and-a-half picture of each creature against colorful backgrounds thick with stylized plants. Although junglelike in their density, they have a flatness that gives the illustrations, done in paper collage augmented with what appears to be crayon and colored pencil, a cluttered feeling. The simple repetitive text, jungle animals, and sound effects will appeal to young children, but this book doesn’t have the spark that makes even the simplest text come alive. Both Bill Martin’s Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? (Holt, 1983) and Sue Williams’s I Went Walking (Harcourt, 1990) are similar, but more satisfying, choices.-Karen James, Louisville Free Public Library, KY