The Wild Outside
Rachel Ip and Katie Hickey
Hodder Children’s Books

There’s nothing little Tulip likes better than to be outside exploring. She observes carefully the flora and fauna using all her senses and never stops asking questions to increase her knowledge. Then she comes upon a trail of muddy footprints on the path and a sign saying Nature Trail. Written in chalk in various places are labels naming lots of the plants, some she’s already familiar with, but lots that are new to her.

Who can possibly have made this trail, she wonders as she catches sight of somebody’s back retreating. Having filled her pockets with flowers and catkins, Tulip and her elder sibling return home and on the doorstep is a parcel with Tulip’s name on and inside is an illustrated botanical guide and a note encouraging her to keep on exploring.

On opening the book, Tulip is excited to find lots of plants and trees she recognises and is inspired to do some labelled drawings. This keeps her engaged until bedtime when she falls asleep wondering where the following day’s explorations will take her. However, come the morning it’s raining hard and so she further explores her book instead, visiting Asian mangroves and forests, the deserts and plains of Australia, African rainforests and grasslands, mountainous regions of Europe,

the North American tundra region, various South American habitats and the cold Antarctic deserts. A clever device this for introducing to readers habitats the world over.

The following day the sun returns but rain has washed away the chalk markings of the trail. However someone has created a new one: who could that be? Tulip chalks a list of plants from the trail, leaving question marks for some she can’t name. On her return walk she discovers somebody else has written the names of those plants and left a trail of footprints. Who could it be? Tulip is delighted to discover the identity of her fellow nature lover and she makes a very special floral thank you using the contents of her pockets and bag.

A smashing way of encouraging young children to emulate Tulip and become natural history enthusiasts. The vibrant illustrations show the abundance of flora Tulip encounters as she explores and the labels are accompanied by brief captions with additional information about each plant. A wonderful combination of story and non-fiction.