ANGEL FALLS

The Jordans (Jungle Days, Jungle Nights, 1993) take a slow poke down the Carrao River in Venezuela, enroute to Angel Falls, that glorious 3,200-foot plunge that is the highest waterfall in the world. This journey serves as a vehicle to introduce the denizens, both plant and animal, of the deep jungle. The text is a straightforward affair, pretty much listing one animal or tree after another: ``From its hide in the cashew tree a bird-eating spider had come down to the forest floor to search for insects in the leaf litter. Nearby hovered a solitary hunting wasp.'' Keeping things afloat are the oil paintings, with their glistening dimensionality that make the strange and wonderful creatures even more strange and wonderful. It is a gallery of curiosities: morpho butterflies, pygmy kingfishers, azteca ants, cock-of-the-rock birds, etc. These pictures have an appropriately primitive touch, failing only in the rendering of Angel Falls, which is somewhat anticlimactic. The book closes with an annotated listing of the creatures mentioned in the body of the book, illustrated with helpful silhouettes. A modest introduction that will provoke further investigation into the exotic Venezuelan interior. (Picture book/nonfiction. 6-9)