Tag flora

The Variety of Life

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The Variety of Life
Nicola Davies and Lorna Scobie
Hodder Children’s Books

Here’s a large format book for young readers to dip in and out of, time and again, especially those who like animals of one kind or another and the wider biodiversity of our planet.

The author and zoologist, Nicola Davies explores the huge diversity of the natural world, providing information about the chosen subjects, one per double spread – a short introductory paragraph to each group and a sentence or two about those depicted (their food, their habits and their habitats) together with the common name, the scientific (Latin) name, and if they happen to number among the endangered species, a black star. It’s alarming to see for instance, that of the eight species of bear, six are threatened with extinction.

Accessibly presented are a large variety of animals big and small, and some plants – grasses and trees and finally, representing the fungi are mushrooms.

Some of the numbers of animal species are questionable though: for instance the number given on the sheep page is 6 species but 9 are illustrated on the relevant spread.

Lorna Scobie’s illustrations of the animal kingdom in particular, are impressionistic rather than strictly scientific. Nonetheless, with their googly eyes, the creatures – from butterflies to bats and sheep to slugs –

have an irresistible child appeal embodying their essential characteristics, and are recognisable if not exactly in the field guide class.

Certainly this thoroughly enjoyable book offers opportunities to take pleasure in, to compare and contrast; and should encourage young readers to respect and treasure the world’s biodiversity and do all they can to preserve and conserve it.

Once Upon a Jungle

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Once Upon a Jungle
Laura Knowles and James Boast
words & pictures
James Boast’s vibrant floral images of the jungle setting that provides a home for myriads of creatures, almost leap out at you  off the pages of this book that focuses on a small number of those creatures, a few of which are just visible on the opening spread …

The straightforward, patterned text then introduces ants, a preying mantis, a lizard, a monkey, a panther that ages and is eventually broken down by roaming beetles.

Thus the soil is enriched, new seedlings thrive and eventually, become part of the jungle habitat: home to …

Simply, and highly effectively, Laura Knowles has demonstrated a food chain within this jungle ecosystem; a food chain that is further elucidated on the final fold-out spread wherein information is given about the various roles played by the sun, producers, consumers and decomposers, along with a final challenge to re-read this alluring book and identify which flora and fauna are performing each role.
As well as being an eye-wateringly beautiful book in its own right, this is an excellent way to introduce the concept of food chains to young children; in addition, it’s a book that children would (once it’s been shared with them) be able to read for themselves. They can along the way, also see how many of the jungle fauna they can spot.

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Botanicum Activity Book/ Under Earth Activity Book & Under Water Activity Book

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Botanicum Activity Book
Katie Scott and Kathy Willis
Big Picture Press
If you loved Botanicum and who wouldn’t, then this from the same team, is definitely for you: it’s an activity book par excellence and is billed as 5+. However, as an early years teacher, I’ve seen 4 year olds do amazingly detailed observational drawings of plants, so I’d bring this down to 4+.
This one took me right back to my ‘gap year’ working as an assistant in the herbarium at Kew where I was awed by the work of the, then resident artist.
Back to this book, which has equally stunning illustrations and is probably best used alongside its ‘parent’ volume. There are pages of flowers and plants to colour; and those who would rather draw have several opportunities: there’s a cycad tree with step-by-step visual instructions, ditto a pineapple fruit. Those who require a little guidance can complete algae patterns,

draw mirror images of a buttercup half, three half leaves, add stem and foliage to four bulbs, for instance. For more confident drawing enthusiasts there are opportunities to create a cactus; complete a Carboniferous forest; add details to some leaves and create your own leaf , to name just some of the more open ended drawing activities.
Spot-the-difference enthusiasts will also be satisfied with the four pages each with ten differences allocated to that activity: this one’s truly beautiful. (You can always cheat by looking at the reverse side if you can’t find them all.)

Should you want to test your botanical knowledge there are pages for that too including .. .

There’s even a maze, which looks quite forbidding, but I managed to do it – eventually – without cheating.
With over 35 activities in all, this superb book offers hours of gently educational pleasure.
Also inspiring are:

Under Earth Activity Book
Under Water Activity Book
Aleksandra Mizielińska & Daniel Mizieliński
Big Picture Press
These two are based on the Mizielińskas’ awesome Under Earth, Under Water and 70 activities can be found in each book. Their design is clever with a wide range of activities on each recto and, in the Earth book, a superbly detailed, underground creature to colour on the verso;

each page being easily detached from the binding. You can find activities as diverse as following instructions for growing your own tubers (potatoes herein)

and completing the drawing of an Aztec stone.
Under Water is similarly presented but with underwater creatures to colour.
Activities herein range from designing a deep-sea diver’s costume, to spotting and drawing 16 pieces of rubbish that have found their way into a lake scene.

Fun learning and creativity bound together and absolutely ideal for holidays, rainy days and times when children (or you) want some relaxing no-screen time, these beauties take activity books to a whole new level of excellence.

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Botanicum & Destination: Space – Awesome Information Books

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Botanicum
Katie Scott and Kathy Willis
Big Picture Press
I was fortunate to spend a year working in the Kew Herbarium in a kind of gap year after science A-levels and have retained an interest in Botany ever since. It was like being in another world and so I was especially interested to receive a copy of this large, lavishly produced book for review.
Published in association with the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, it is essentially, a guide to the world’s flora, illustrated by Katie Scott (who also illustrated Animalium) with text from co-curator, Professor Kathy Willis (Kew’s Director of Science).
Before entering the seven galleries we’re given a wonderful introductory spread of the different types of plants that sets the scene for the whole thing …

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Gallery 1 contains the most primitive plants in habitants of the Carboniferous Forests: from single celled diatoms

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Algae

to ferns.
Trees (and shrubs) comprise gallery 2 and from there we move to Palms and Cycads, Herbaceous Plants,

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Wild Flowers

then Grasses, Cattails, Sedges and Rushes; followed by Orchids and Bromeliads in Gallery 6 and the final section looks at Adapting to Environments.
The detailed illustrations are superb – look at these pitcher plants …

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and the variety of page layout adds extra visual interest as the thick pages are turned and we gaze transfixed at some hundred colour spreads that provide a veritable visual feast.

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Each entry is numbered and factual snippets are provided in a key. I’m pleased to see the Latin names are used – I often find these coming to mind more easily than the common ones, but I guess that’s my botanical background.

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There’s something to interest everyone from primary school browser and information seeker to adult reader as the text ranges between chatty – in reference to the giant sequoia ‘it takes sixteen adults holding hands to reach around one‘ to the more challenging (of lichens): ‘They are a collaboration between a fungal element and photosynthesising algae.’ Having said that, I know that children at least, are able to absorb challenging vocabulary in context.
A terrific collaboration and a fine volume to accompany Animalium.

Information-hungry youngsters should find much to interest in:

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Destination: Space
Dr Christoph Englert and Tom Clohosy Cole
Wide Eyed Editions
Herein readers can join five astronauts and embark on a journey of discovery through our Solar System to galaxies beyond. During the course of the mind-boggling journey, they can find out about such topics as ‘Stars’,’Earth’s Cycles‘ …

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‘Black Holes’, ‘The Solar System’ and ‘Earth and its Magnetic Field’ . They can read about telescopes ancient and modern …

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‘Unmanned Space Exploration’ that uses probes and contemplate ‘Life on Other Planets’. Each of these (and other fascinating subjects) is given a large, mostly visual double spread illustration by Tom Clohosy Cole onto which is superimposed an introductory paragraph and other snippets of information from lecturer in astronomy and physics, Dr Christoph Englert.
The grand finale is a fold-out page that when open becomes a large, double-sided poster.
Just the thing for a topic on space in the primary school or for interested individuals.

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The River / Wilderness: Nature’s Wonders

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The River
Hanako Clulow and Patricia Hegarty
Caterpillar Books
‘In snow-capped mountains among the firs/ The north wind blows; something stirs./ Through icy water, a small fish darts -/ This is where her journey starts … ‘
We join that shimmering, glimmering fish as she journeys down river starting from the snow-capped mountain peaks, swishing past dense mountain woods …

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and pine forests, through ever-changing landscapes as she travels by day and night …

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and through the seasons, on her epic swim to the vast, deep open sea ‘where she’s meant to be!’ – a sea populated by a shoal of sparkly fish.

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Readers delight in joining the fish on her journey, making her swim faster or slower by tilting and angling the book, viewing her as an ever-in-motion hologram (set inside the back cover) through a die-cut hole that keeps her, mid-stream, on every spread. Read it first to play with the fish and then turn back and re-read the whole, savouring Patricia Hegarty’s lyrical rhyming text and being spell-bound by the wonderful wildlife scenes rendered in soft, matte textured, illustrations. The richly detailed, painterly style shows feathers and fur as if close up …
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as well as the gorgeous hues of the surrounding flora of the landscapes.
What a superb testament to one particular river, and to the rich abundance of flora and fauna through which it flows and of course, to one little fish on its migratory journey. SO much to see, SO much to think about, SO much to relish.

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Wilderness
Hannah Pang and Jenny Wren
360 Degrees (a Little Tiger imprint)
Subtitled ‘An Interactive Atlas of Animals’ this has visual appeal in bucket loads and it’s highly informative too. It introduces readers to a variety of habitats in both Eastern and Western Hemispheres and then focuses on different habitats in turn allocating a double spread to each one. We embark on a tropical rainforest ramble (visiting various locations as not all the animals featured are found in the same part of the world),

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a safari in the hot grassy savannahs of Africa, join an ocean dive and search, visit a freshwater location, the desert dunes, polar regions and high mountain pastures and forests, complete with pop-up mountain …

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Snippets of information abound on every location spread and there are flaps to lift enabling readers to discover more about the various animals resting upon them; there are even mini booklets on Bugs, Creatures of the Deep, the Honeybee and the salmon life-cycle.

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There’s a tiny life-cycle book on the left …

So, we have some desert dunes populated by Arabian camels, Addax (rare creatures also called Screwhorn antelopes), a vulture, a Namib Dune Gecko, a rattlesnake that leaves tell-tale tracks in the sand, hairy, scary giant scorpions and tarantulas; and there’s a side wheel which when turned shows the enormous range of temperatures of the habitat. (sub zero at night and 45 degrees C at mid-day).

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Rotating wheel top left …

Chock-full of details, rich in the colours of mother nature’s palette, and sturdily designed and built to withstand frequent handling, this is one to engender a sense of awe and wonder about the natural world, and highly recommended for the family bookshelf and a must-buy for early years and primary school classroom.

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Dreamer

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Dreamer
Brian Moses and Bee Willey
Otter-Barry Books
Subtitled ‘Saving Our Wild World’ we join a dreaming child in this stunningly beautiful book: ‘ I dreamed I was a whale … and no hunters chased after me.’ The child continues to dream; about a world where animals are safe and nobody pursues them for food, for their fur or their ivory …

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a world where the waters of streams and lakes, and the air, are pollution-free,

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where rainforest trees are not cut down and valleys left to nature, locations where animals have territorial rights and can stay safe and perhaps undiscovered.

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Through poet, Brian Moses’ starkly powerful words and Bee Willey’s equally powerful, mixed media collage and acrylic artistry through which she conjures up atmospheric scenes of land, lake, sea and air, we have an almost prayerful visual plea for a world that is environmentally friendly, where wildlife is respected and habitats unpolluted. Every one of the spreads would look beautiful framed and the whole book is a wonderful and wondrous starting point for discussions about protecting our precious planet, and on sharing the earth’s resources. It could well spark off children’s own creative endeavours, both visual and verbal, on this vitally important topic.
To further the environmental cause, there’s a final ‘Take Action’ page with some alarming facts (did you know that every year 3 times as much junk is dumped into the world’s oceans as the weight of fish caught, for instance); and useful websites to encourage children to get involved with various ‘green’ organisations.

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Patterns, Colours & Cars

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Pattern-Tastic Treasure Hunt
Technicolour Treasure Hunt
illustrated by Nan Na Hvass and Sophie Hannibal
Wide Eyed Editions
If you want to get young children observing, talking and thinking, then these two large format board books are superb. Cleverly designed with tabs down the side and chock-full of exciting things from the natural world, they’re certain to generate discussion and excitement. Pattern-Tastic focuses on flora and fauna that are spotty…

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stripy, spiky, speckled, have a spiral design or are wavy in some way …

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All superb examples of Mother Nature, designer.
Strikingly illustrated and full of counting opportunities too, there’s an invitation on every spread to find the odd one out –whose design breaks the theme.
Technicolour Treasure Hunt gives a spread to each of the primary colours plus pink, green, orange and purple. Each asks youngsters to find the ten named items of the particular colour,

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listing them opposite the question, ‘Can you find all of these eg. red things

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All Kinds of Cars
Carl Johanson
Flying Eye Books
Swedish artist Johanson take an every day item, the car, and puts a whole new spin on it in what is essentially a visual vehicular catalogue. Letting his imagination run riot, Johanson’ s opening spreads are entirely crazy offerings ranging from a ‘marmalade’ car to a blubbery looking ‘obese’ car on the first; then turn the page and we have these beauties:

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I’m not sure what the raison d’être for including the ‘English bus’ here was but assuredly there are some odd passengers aboard.
Next is a spread of fire-related rescue vehicles – real not imagined this time and they’re put into an action setting as are those on the next spread – a building site in this instance.

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This pattern is repeated through the book: two spreads of imagined cars – anyone for a ‘bed’ car?

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I just love the ‘toy’ car …

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but suggest steering clear of that ‘poo’ car – imagine sitting in that PHOAW! …

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I think my very favourite has to be the ‘book’ car but that ‘Mondrian’ car rather appealed to my sense of the ridiculous.

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And so we go on: there’s a farming vehicle spread, a building site, an airport page and a city street scene complete with dog poo collecting bike! As well as further flights of fancy of the car kind. There’s also an alphabetic index and end papers that positively cry out to be coloured in.
I had to use strong persuasive tactics to get this one out of the clutches of a group of 4s to 8s (mainly boys) who got their hands on my copy. I’m sure it will generate a whole lot of creative endeavours from readers. Think of the, dare I say it, FUN you could have with this one in a primary classroom.

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