Dear Daniel: Letters from Antarctica; Amazon Diary: The Jungle Adventures of Alex Winters

Here are two information books in the guise of diaries, suitable for 8-12 year-olds. Amazon Diary is a fictionalised account of a stay in the rainforest with a 'lost' tribe of Amazonian Indians and Dear Daniel is a record of travel writer Sara Wheeler's time spent in Antarctica.

Dear Daniel is the more conventional production. Each double page deals with a particular aspect of life on the frozen continent, say transport or dress, and is introduced by a letter from Sara to her godson, Daniel. The best parts of the book are Sara Wheeler's own photographs of herself, people and places, which, although sometimes not of the highest quality, have a real immediacy.

I wish Macdonald had been more adventurous in their presentation, because struggling to escape from the straitjacket of a topic book is a piece of travel writing for children which conveys the kind of feeling for place which can only come from having been there. It includes bizarre details like Sara's friend Lucia curling up in a wooden crate to keep warm and the traditional Christmas at the South Pole 'Race Around the World' which would be hard to find in any other children's book on Antarctica.

On the other hand, Amazon Diary could have done with a little less 'adventure' and derring-do. The presentation is marvellous. It is in the style of a scrap-book, with a diary written in clear longhand, snap-shot photographs, drawings and paintings, jokey marginal notes, mementoes 'sellotaped' in, and a wealth of anecdotal information on the Yanomamis; all as if it could have been written by marooned sixth grader, Alex Winters. But I have misgivings about the (invented?) drama in which one of the tribe's young women is kidnapped by another tribe and rescued only by Alex's clever stratagem and the use of a tape recorder. This not only stretches credulity, it also smacks of a kind of imperial tale (white intelligence and technological 'magic' save the day) which belongs a century ago. It is Indiana Jones anthropology.

Both books have an emphasis on direct experience and personal viewpoint which makes a refreshing change from the blandness of many information books whose authors have not ventured beyond the word processor and the picture library. But such an approach brings a responsibility to broaden the reader's access to information. Wheeler recognises this with a bibliography and list of helpful organisations. Talbott and Greenberg refer us only to the Amazonia Foundation.