Green: The Story of Plant Life on Our Planet
Nicola Davies and Emily Sutton
Walker Books

Starting with a single tree, team Nicola and Emily take readers on a journey through the natural world focusing on the vital importance of plant life. In so doing such topics as the process of photosyntheses

and the opposite process, respiration, are elucidated in the author’s carefully considered prose, She takes us right back to 4.5 billion years ago when earth’s air was toxic, moving forward a billion years when the very first plant microbes began to release oxygen into the air and more diverse life forms became possible. We learn how over millions of years the remains of forests were turned into the fossil fuels coal, gas and oil within which were enormous stores of carbon dioxide and energy from sunlight, this energy being used by humans for their various needs It’s terrible to realise that in so doing we have caused the formation of a thick blanket of CO₂ around the Earth thus stopping heat from escaping, the consequence being global warming.

All is not lost though for plants continue to do their work, giving shade, releasing water to create rain as well as using their ‘greenness to trap energy from sunlight and locking CO₂ in their leaves, branches and roots. Plants however need to work with other living things such as animals and fungi to do this, as well as working with each other in communities that Nicola calls ‘great green nations’

This is why it is vital everybody, the world over, stops destroying forests and polluting the oceans and focuses on protecting all things green.

Once again Nicola’s passion, knowledge and understanding shine through her carefully chosen words: the text in combination with Emily’s captivating, detailed scenes have created a book which gives us all hope that it’s not too late for our precious planet.