Tag Lemniscates

Come into the Garden – A Big Garden / The Magic Garden

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A Big Garden
Gillles Clément and Vincent Gravé
Prestel Publishing

As I write, our garden is really starting to burst forth: leaves are unfurling, flower buds are opening everywhere, birds are beginning to nest – spring has finally arrived.

Now is the time to celebrate and how better than with this unusual edition that originated in France. It’s a truly mind-blowing book with a wide age range appeal, and BIG it surely is to encompass that titular big garden.

Prepare yourself to get totally lost within each and every awesomely beautiful illustration as, starting with May, we are treated to a month by month close up look at the seasons alongside the gardener who tends it.

The text is a straightforward miscellany of horticultural musings with the occasional flight of fancy: September being given over to the gardener himself.

However, it’s those intricately detailed illustrations that will entrap you as you explore the intricately detailed pictorial pages,

June Fruit

each one comprising a plethora of fanciful mini-scenes, and search for the hidden objects mentioned on the prose pages.

And be sure to peruse the title pages and endpapers; they too are superb.

For younger readers is

The Magic Garden
Lemniscates
Walter Foster Jr.

Do you think of your garden as magic? Probably not, although you perhaps do notice and enjoy the seasonal changes, and the abundant wildlife that inhabits it.

Not so, young Chloe the protagonist of this book which begins one autumn afternoon with her walking without awareness until suddenly a sound causes her to pause beside the tree and take notice of its colourful leaves; it’s as if the wind is whispering to her.

Thereafter we’re taken on a journey of her garden where we can observe some of the wonderful creatures that live there – among the branches,

behind stones, in the pond – taking note of seasonal activity and change.

We see the garden by day but also by night when other insects make their presence known.

Some animals prefer to keep themselves hidden and readers are encouraged to look more closely for those as well as noticing the brightly coloured ones.

The seasons pass, the tree too changes: it’s bedecked with blossom, laden with fruits.

All this and more is part and parcel of this seemingly ordinary, yet ‘magical’ place. I prefer the use of magical rather than magic; for me nature is awesome and magical but not magic – a potential talking point when you share the book with children.

It’s beautifully designed and illustrated with much of the text taking the form of the wind’s words to the child.

Trees / We’re Going on a Bear Hunt My First Adventure Field Guide

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Trees
Lemniscates
Walker Books
Published under the Walker Studio imprint, this is a gorgeously textured, digitally worked, tribute to trees. Through elegant illustrations and a succinctly worded text, homage is paid to trees. We see them in all their changing seasonal glory;

trees with ‘their heads in the clouds and their feet on the ground.’

And we learn something of the functions of their roots; their various locations and something of the important environmental roles they play: homes for a plethora of birds and other creatures, providing shade for humans and other animals, cleansers of the air we breathe; and providers of a bounty of fruits. In the last few spreads we are in the company of a child in various tree interactions both rural and urban.

Share this lovely book with young children and then go outside and start to observe, enjoy and appreciate the wonderful trees around.

We’re Going on a Bear Hunt My Adventure Field Guide
text by Hannah Peng/Walker Books
Walker Entertainment
Somebody somewhere has had the clever idea of capitalising on the popularity of the original Rosen/Oxenbury We’re Going on a Bear Hunt picture book and the more recent success of the animation of the same and come up with this natural history adventure guide using some stills of scenes from the latter.
Like all good adventures, it takes a bit of planning and making sure one takes the appropriate things along in the way of clothing and protection, together with a handy notebook. Then it’s off into the big wide world of explorations, be they at home, school, countryside or seaside, by day or perhaps, night, always accompanied of course, by a responsible adult.
‘High in the Sky’, ‘Down in the Ground’ in that ‘thick oozy mud’; Further Afield to caves, through woodlands and forest (stumble trip) and onto the shore are other possible places for spotting a plethora of flora and fauna, large and small. Doing weather observations, making mud bricks, collecting fruits for scrumptious baked apples, creating a special plant habitat at home and measuring the heights of trees are just some of the numerous possibilities included; and I’m sure children will relish the idea of a poo hunt.
With its wipe-clean cover, this backpack-sized beauty concludes with some important words about the impact of certain kinds of human activity on the natural world, ways to help combat these and a final glossary.
For any child with a taste for adventure, either at home or in school.

I’ve signed the charter