Book Review: The Grand Expedition

Title: The Grand Expedition 

Author: Emma Adbaige

Date: 2018

Publisher: Enchanted Lion

Length: 28 pages

ISBN: 978-1-59270-245-9

Illustrations by the author

Quote: "Iben takes a jump rope, too. 'In case we need a lasso!'"

How old are the narrator and her smaller brother Iben? Three and four years old, I'd guess. All by themselves, without adult help, they're allowed to set up a little tent in the back yard and stay out in it until a mosquito bites one of them. The narrator feels it necessary to specify what people do in the bathroom, too. They don't have, or want, any adults teaching them anything about real hiking or camping. Their idea of an expedition is to stay outside for an hour or two. 

Do children want to read about children as childish as these two? While they're at the sitting-on-someone's-knee-and-being-read-to stage, as Iben and his unnamed sister appear to be, children enjoy almost anything that is read to them.  If they have room to act out any physical movement that takes place in the story, they're delighted. A story that encourages them to walk out into the yard and then back into the house might appeal.

Adults, for whom children have become cute, like stories about very small children just as they are. Children, whose survival instincts are screaming at them to outgrow being cute and become competent as fast as possible, tend to prefer stories about children who are a little more mature and competent than themselves. A picture book where the main character has not had the benefit of an experience the child audience had just yesterday will be tossed aside, "for babies." When I was four years old I was not much more of an outdoorsman than Iben and his sister, but I wanted books that taught me more, not books that stopped where I was. When my brother was four years old and had a seven-year-old to keep up with, he was a more competent outdoorsman than Iben and his sister. I suspect either of us would have dismissed The Grand Expedition as "a baby's book" at any age beyond two.

For me, the specification of why the narrator goes to the bathroom would be the deal breaker. I think children need encouragement to keep such details to themselves. However, one reason why children's books have so often featured such idiotically anthropomorphic animal characters is the contemptuous way children tend to reject stories they see as aimed toward children younger or less competent than they are. If you read aloud to a child who thinks it's amusing to talk like a Judy Blume character, you might try this book as a corrective. "Aren't those two little town children babyish and ignorant? All they do is sit in their tent reading a book. They don't even watch for birds. That's the kind of child who says things like 'need to poop' instead of 'want to come back inside," might work on children who are five or six and have learned a few key outdoor skills like killing their own mosquitoes.

If you prefer not to encourage uncharitable displays of contempt toward children a year or two behind yours, there are sillier cartoon books (The Berenstain Bears Camp Out, We're Going on a Bear Hunt) written for children just beginning to read. There are more substantial books about camping and nature too (Boy Scout Handbooks and Girl Scout Handbooks for a start, and it's a mistake to underestimate young nature lovers' willingness to read grown-up field guides once their eyes have developed enough that they can see the letters). 

Much as I'd like to say that all of the books Enchanted Lion sent me for review are classics every child should enjoy...I think this one has some value, but the time window when it's likely to be enjoyed is very narrow. If you've not seen your grandchildren in the last week or two but they seem about the ages of the rug rats in the (terribly cute) pictures, they're probably too old for this book. 

There is a secondary time window for this book. Adults tend to love Lisa Adbaige's lifelike-cartoon-style drawings. Adults will be charmed by the fact that, for the whole afternoon during which this story takes place, the little white-blond (Swedish) moppets are alone with their white-blond Dad, and don't see this as a novelty. Mother presumably has her own job, and nobody worries about her being out of the house all day. For some adults that may seem like a very fresh and liberating motif in a children's book. For some adults this book would make a lovely gift.