The Littles Go Exploring

written by John Peterson

Interior illustrations by Roberta Carter Clark

Scholastic, 1978

Genre: Children's fiction; adventure

Reading level: ages 6-9

96 pages

The Littles Go Exploring is a children's adventure book that follows the Little family in their search for their long lost grandfather. It starts out with the two children, Tom and Lucy, who watch as their mail accidentally falls into the chimney. The Little family are tiny people who live in the walls of the Bigg's house. They go to retrieve it and in doing so find a secret room. They find some old papers that were their grandfathers. They take it up to their family's "apartment" where Mr. and Mrs. Little along with Tom and Lucy's two uncles read through the pages and decide that their disappeared grandfather built a raft and sailed down the brook. After some research they decide to tell Granny and all go to look for him. Their first attempt to leave on Henry Bigg's toy boat is a failure as big kids start playing with the boat and they have to escape. So they try again with a boat found by their friend who is a pilot and they start on their journey, Tom and one of the uncles decide to try and build the raft that grandpa had left a diagram of, to try and replicate his journey exactly. But they are soon separated from the group and reunite with them as they all run into another tiny family that lives on the edge of the brook in caves. The Brook family tells them that they met their grandfather but he continued down the stream. The Littles stay for lunch and head out to search farther down. The brook quickly becomes a river, and it starts raining. They crash into a small island and their boat is ruined. However, they find their grandpa! plus a few other tiny people that had also been stranded. Luckily just before they crashed they radioed to their pilot friend and he comes to save them all.

I would recommend this book to any child who enjoys adventure stories.

I can think of no controversies that could come from reading this book.

I thought this book was very entertaining. It was fast and funny. It was a sweet children's book that i'm sure any child with an imagination will enjoy

My rating 4 out of 5