A romp in the wilderness, Adventures in Desolation Sound by Grant Lawrence and Ginger Ngo is a reminder to step away from the TV every once in a while.

Based on Grant Lawrence’s childhood memories, this story joins the Lawrence family on their first trip to Desolation Sound. Through the story of young Grant and his sister Heather, readers may relate to some of the new experiences that first summer in the wilderness.

Grant Lawrence took me back to my childhood through this hilarious story. I love the colloquial language in the story. It will definitely elicit a few guffaws! I really enjoy it when authors use words like barf and poop in their stories. Call me immature but I really think that there are some readers out there that can be easily hooked on the reading experience when we add just a little bit of gross.

I love how readers get to experience the wonder of the wilderness through this story. It’s an awesome reminder to a lot of us to take some time to step away from devices and just experience the wide world around us. It’s incredible what we notice when we turn our eyes to the world instead of to our devices.

Grant Lawrence includes photos of all the people in the story at the end of the book, photos of Russell and Cougar Nancy so readers can understand that this really is a true story. I also very much appreciated how Grant Lawrence acknowledged the people on whose land they were exploring, the Tla’amin, Klahoose and Homalco First Nations.

Ginger Ngo’s illustrations are chaotic and colourful in the best possible way. Readers are not left with a lack of options as to where to focus their attention. Her pictures are ones that will keep readers coming back to the story to find all the little things they missed the last time they spent time in the story.