It's a Jungle Up There
More Tales from the Treetops
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- £14.99
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- £14.99
Publisher Description
Drawn to the mysteries of tropical rain forests and fascinated by life in the treetops, Meg Lowman has pursued a life of scientific exploration while raising her two sons, Edward and James Burgess. This book recounts their family adventures in remote parts of the world (Samoa, West Africa, Peru, Panama, India, Biosphere 2, and others), from the perspectives of both kids and parent. Together they explore tropical rain forests, encounter anacondas and piranhas, eat crickets as hors d’oeuvres, discover new species, and nurture a family ethic for conservation.
The chapters of the book focus on field biology questions, the canopy access methods developed to answer the questions, and conservation or education components of each expedition. Lowman enumerates the challenges and joys of juggling parenthood and career, and the children reflect on how their mom’s work has affected their lives. A rollicking, inspiring book, It’s a Jungle Up There is an upbeat portrayal of how a parent’s career can imprint children, and how children in turn can influence the success and trajectory of their parent’s career.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A single mother who studies the science of eaten leaves (herbivory), Lowman (Life in the Treetops) has traveled to distant tropical locations such as Peru, India and Samoa, often with her two sons in tow, and in this testament to her rarified approach to parenting, urges parents to get out there with their kids and let them get dirty. Her co-authors are her sons, and their essays on Biosphere 2, bromeliads and beetles bolster her claims that immersion in nature can produce young conservationists. She also boasts that her science work and her parenting style inform one another and help promote her goal of expanding forest conservation. She proselytizes throughout the book for environmental education, but it is the stories of spending water-logged nights aloft in the rainforest canopy and gross-out stories of eating hissing cockroaches that persuade most effectively. Readers will find themselves skipping through her repetitive exhortations to get back to the forests in order to get at the book's meat: adventure stories and oddball ecological information. The essays by her sons read like college-admissions essays, and the illustrations are needlessly whimsical, but Lowman's spirited tale of science and single parenting is inspirational.
