Oh, What a Wonderful World!

Hooray for summer! As I write it is sunny and bright, the birds are singing and the meadow in front of my desk is a carpet of yellow cowslips! I thought therefore, I’d choose books for you which celebrate the outside world and inspire all sorts of investigations and activities for sunny weekends and holidays.

First is All Change : a Book of Nature’s Transformations, by Harriet Evans and Linda Tardoff, an ingenious lift the flap board book for very young children. Lift the flaps and the bare winter tree has leaves and blossom; the caterpillar becomes a butterfly; the sleeping volcano erupts; and the tide comes in. With very simple explanatory text and lovely clear pictures, this is an excellent way to inspire even the youngest children to notice these changes when they are out and about.

Songs of the Birds by Isobel Otter and Clover Robin, with its 24 bird calls at the press of the buttons is a delightful resource when you’re trying to identify the birds in your garden or local park. Or even just to cheer you up when you’re inside on a dull day. Each page offers a different representative habitat (dawn chorus in the garden; water birds by a pond; woodland; town birds; evening bird calls). The illustrations offer clear and accurate likenesses of the birds, so you have visual matches as well as the calls, and there is some simple text with basic facts about the birds in question. I haven’t tried taking the book outside and playing the calls to see if the wild birds will respond, but it is worth a try! When you’ve had enough, there’s a discreet ‘off’ button on the back cover.

Another clever lift the flap book is See Inside Evolution by Emily Bone and Ana Sender. What a brilliant way to illustrate the history of life on earth for children – the flaps showing the shift from the boiling mud pools and poisonous gases on earth four billion years to the development of the first cells deep under the ocean and then, in simple terms, how clusters of cells became creatures in the water, and then on land; how the meteor crash wiped out the dinosaurs but how other animals survived; and then on to the evolution of humans and to some of the extraordinary evolutionary adaptations in nature. The final double-page spread explains how we know about evolution – again with flaps to lift to help illustrate the science. This is an Usborne STEM publication and reflects the publisher’s understanding of the right balance of serious scientific information in text and pictures to interest and inspire children aged 6 and upwards about the world around them.

’Do try this at home’ is the invitation in Sunday Fun Day: a Nature Activity for Every Weekend of the Year by Katherine Halligan and Jesus Verona. It includes, as it says, 52 seasonal activities for children – from spring morning yoga (be a tree, be a downward-facing dog) to making autumn leaf-lullaby mobiles and winter pine-cone bird feeders. Some activities will need a bit of adult help to get going (or at least to provide the necessary supplies) and some require adult attendance (eg some of the cookery) but all will inspire and absorb children in creativity, teach them about the world around them, and encourage them to caring for their environment. The instructions and illustrations are bright and clear, and the projects should all produce pleasing results for display. I particularly liked one of the longerterm and larger projects to make a secret garden by creating a wigwam circle of bamboo canes and growing peas or runner beans, nasturtiums or honeysuckle up them. A large enough circle would allow this to be a child’s secret hideaway - which could also furnish its own healthy snacks!

I couldn’t resist A Day in the Life of a Poo, a Gnu, and You: A laugh-out-loud Guide to Life on Earth by Mike Barfield and Jess Bradley -a cartoon-style, funny, but no less very informative account of everything from how the human body works, to what goes on in the animal kingdom to the science behind the world around us, including how clocks, lightbulbs, tornadoes and clouds work. The book was the deserved winner of the 2021 Blue Peter Award for the best factual book and will appeal to children who love reading comics. As the Introduction explains, there are comic-book style snapshots of what ‘things get up to’ all day, ‘Bigger Picture’ pages with more detailed facts, and ‘Secret Diaries’ with even more inside knowledge (for example the secret diary of the space probe Voyager 1). The text is informal and is great fun to read with plenty of groan-inducing jokes which will help the science to stick - for example, Bella, the vampire bat explains that when her friend Velma visited her, feeling hungry, Bella vomited up some of her own stomach contents into Velma’s mouth. ‘It’s good to share. And good deeds like that helps keep the colony – our group – together. Would you be that generous with your friends?’. Children are unlikely to forget that sort of fact in a hurry! But maybe there should be a ‘don’t try this at home’ warning!

Finally, there’s The Trouble with Earth by Alex Latimer, a rhyming story about how the other planets come to recognise the amazing variety of life on earth. The planets are heading off for their annual holiday ‘out somewhere in the Milky Way’. They leave Earth behind because they think she has fleas as they have seen things moving around on her surface. She then shows them just what marvels there are. ‘” It’s true”, said Earth, “I am infested just as Mars has suggested. And its not just fleas, there’s so much more! From mountain top to ocean floor! I LOVE each creature, plant and bug, Each human, tree, and tiny slug” ‘. Earth then explains why the other planets can’t ‘catch’ any of these infestations – Neptune is too cold, Mercury too hot, Pluto too small etc – but that they are welcome to hear more of her stories about all her creatures. What a joyful and very clever celebration of our wonderful world, even including its fleas!

All these books are on the shelves at Harts Books in Saffron Walden along with hundreds of others to choose from to help inspire children to explore and cherish the world around them. I hope you will find something to suit the children in your care.

Jo Burch - Founder of Words in Walden