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Non-Fiction Book Reviews
A Guide to Plants for Little Witchlings: 15 Spells, Charms and Crafts
Jennifer Lane, pub. Post Wave Children’s Books
This unassuming, gentle, quite beautiful little book shares 15 common plants and wildflowers from the garden which have hidden superpowers, secrets and stories. Each plant has its own double-page spread explaining what it looks like, where it grows, when to see it, what it can be used for, its magical meaning and some fun facts all set alongside fascinating folklore.
The colourful sketchbook-style illustrations are particularly lovely, enhancing the accessible explanations and bringing each wildflower vividly to life. From calming lavender to tummy-settling mint and lucky honeysuckle, young readers are invited to harness the special superpowers of plants through a whole series of nature-magic activities and crafts. There are cute friendship charms made from daisies, a protection pizza with basil leaves, a dried dandelion posy for confidence. Witches are presented as people who know that everything in nature is special and needs to be taken care of so these magic spells, charms and petal potions, with their focus on family, friendship, courage and happiness, are the perfect place for young witchlings to start. The author, once a little witchling herself, shares safety tips for exploring outside and includes a personal promise for witchlings-to-be to care for nature and use wildflower magic wisely and for good.
This magical guidebook is a real celebration of the wonders of nature and an invitation to young readers to slow down, to look more closely at the world and to harness the magic growing all around. It would make a superb gift, one which will be picked up, pored over and re-read, inspiring many magical adventures in the garden, or further afield, for little witchlings. It even has a ribbon, as all the best books do! It would also make a brilliant addition to a classroom wellbeing collection, encouraging mindfulness, connection and a love of nature.
It’s quirky, cosy, charming, and a genuinely lovely idea for a book. I’d have loved it as a child and still learnt a lot as a grown-up!
Eileen Armstrong
Christine Modafferi, illus. Magdalena Konecná, pub. Big Picture Press
If you were considering spending a year in a forest would you know what to expect as the days and months passed, as the seasons changed, or would you need a guide. I suspect that most of us would need a guide, having some but not all the knowledge a year in the forest may require of us. Plus, learning more about the forest, the seasons and the wild world around us is not only important but also fascinating.
One of the beauties of this book is no matter which month you start off in you can be guaranteed to want to revisit it once you’ve passed through a whole year. Each month brings you into contact with a poem, specially chosen to reflect the time of year. There are prompts for anyone who is interested in drawing or journaling their annual journey through the forest and with everything combined readers cannot help but feel a strong sense of connection to nature. There are wild animals to meet, their habitats and habits to explore. There is birdlife including tips on spotting and what sounds to listen for if you’d like to try and identify any. If you are interested in doing more to help with conservation and sustainability in our woodlands you’ll find tips, hints and guidance on that aspect too. Plus, with the inclusion of significant annual environmental dates, such as March’s World Earth Day, you can mark milestones, celebrate nature and bring it to the attention of others in unique ways.
Adults, children, families, everyone will find something interesting, exciting and waiting to be explored when they pick up this book. It might be something in the now, in the month you pick up the book or something to look forward to in a future month. There is no one way to use this book other than the way that suits you.
Louise Ellis-Barrett
A Year In the Forest: 365 nature facts and activities to inspire you all year round
An Anthology of Micro Life: Discover the Stories of the Miniature World
Jess French, illus. Angela Rizza and Daniel Long, pub. Dorling Kindersley
A big book, a big subject, a tiny lifeform.
It’s very easy, when looking around us, to forget that much of the life on our planet is supported by micro creatures. It’s easy to forget, and quite simply it’s also possible not to know how the micro life of our planet works. Now, with this amazing anthology all that could change, you could, you can learn more about it and thanks to the wonders of modern technology you can also see it!
Using both photography and illustrations the micro creatures of our world are brought to life for us. On the page they are larger than life so that we can see the detail without having to imagine it and it’s incredible. There are more than ninety minute forms of life included. All of them come with images and their descriptions balance features of both storytelling and science making this book incredibly accessible and highly appealing. On that note you might also like to know that there are both appealing and unappealing content. That is not a criticism but an observation and an important inclusion. Micro life is not only about the good parts of our world, it is the story of all the parts of our world which means the bad is needed as a balance. Learn more about tiny delicate pollen seeds which matter so much to wildlife and plants alike whilst also discovering that there are bacteria and viruses all around us and inside us, some of which have very important jobs to do.
Be prepared for the good, the bad, the ugly and the beautiful as you explore the wonderful science and stories behind our planet’s micro life.
Louise Ellis-Barrett
Beach School: Seaside Adventures for Young Explorers
Georgina Maw, pub. Button Books
Beach School is both a wonderful, fun-packed introduction to the world of beaches and an invitation to explore these diverse and very vulnerable ecosystems by encouraging children to engage in hands-on, play-based learning outdoors and develop a deeper understanding of nature and the world around us.
The author, a former primary school teacher and Geography specialist, is Head of Education at Final Straw Foundation, a charity dedicated to the health of the UK’s coastlines. Her expertise, love of the coast and infectious enthusiasm shine through every one of the 100+ imaginative activities and projects collected together in this inspirational book. A passionate educator and environmental advocate, she clearly explains the many benefits of beach play, provides health and safety advice and offers a seashore code for ensuring best beach behaviour. There are activities here for honing essential survival skills in the great outdoors as well as games, crafts, storytelling, creative writing, and even tips for foraging for wild beach food; everything from making journey sticks, pebble art and beach mosaics to tide measuring and knot tying, map reading, campfire building, storytelling, rock pooling and singing sea shanties is included. The emphasis is firmly on nurturing problem-solving, creativity, teamwork and communication skills as well as developing a love and respect for nature. Each activity has a rationale, explanation of relevant scientific facts and step-by step instructions. A mix of colour photos and colourful illustrations show the activities in action. Appendices examine environmental issues such as problem plastics and sustainable seafood in more detail and signpost readers to important citizen science projects.
Beach School is brilliantly written, informative and educational, it turns every beach walk into a seaside learning adventure. It’s perfect for home educators and for parents planning seaside holidays or days out at the coast. It provides a ready-made, structured curriculum of creative projects for every primary school with a beach school designation. It’s a must read for every time-pressed primary school teacher tasked with planning a school trip to the beach, providing structure and rigour and heaps of useful advice as well as inspiring and engaging activities - all of which are fun and free.
This is the ultimate beach guide: a comprehensive compendium to dip in and out of again and again. I can’t recommend it highly enough and wanted to dash out to the nearest beach immediately after reading it. Let the beach-based adventures begin!
A companion volume, Forest School Adventure, is also available.
Eileen Armstrong
Beacons of Light: A Journey through the World of Lighthouses
Gemma Koomen, pub. Post Wave Children’s Books
Long ago, beneath a starlit sky, travellers braved the wild waves. Lost and lonely, they yearned for a way home. Then, a flicker in the distance! A lighthouse, a beacon of hope, pierced the darkness and guided them to safety.
Beacons of Light is a fabulous book that blends interesting information with engaging artwork. The reader journeys through a range of lighthouses from the earliest structures through varying stages of change and development until the powerful technological structures of today are revealed. The book combines history, awe, ingenuity, technology and the human story behind these amazing and incredibly important structures and the terrifying power of the sea. We see over 50 lighthouses and appreciate the diversity in their designs and characters. Technical issues are explained but Gemma Koomen’s language is sensitive, simple and lyrical ensuring this is not a challenge to the reader.
I certainly enjoyed exploring some of the stories and myths surrounding lighthouses and liked the consideration of the lifesaving function too. Post Wave Children’s Books say their mission is “to make every child around the globe a reader. We believe that being a reader brings opportunities and opens up the world.” Beacons of Light is a testament to this as it is “original, beautiful, fun and clever.” Informative, thought-provoking, entertaining and inspirational, this is a really special book for children aged 4-7 years – don’t miss it.
Brenda Marshall
Home Is Where the Herd Is: How Animal Families Take Care of Each Other
Sara and Olivia Forster, illus. Sara Mulvanny, pub. Little Gestalten
It's a fresh green morning today in India after the cleansing monsoon season and the skies are full of cicadas and dragon flies flitting like tiny sylphs. They usher us into autumn, a time which brings some of my favourite festivals, from Diwali to Halloween making it perfect for get-togethers and family reunions. But I wonder how the animals and birds do things for their families. We love our kinfolks but do you know how whales, penguins, elephants, wolves, buffaloes, lions and other animals care for their loved ones?
We find that out in Home Is Where the Herd Is: How Animal Families Take Care of Each Other – co-written by Sara and Olivia Forster, it is a tender and soothing reflection upon one of the most fundamental forces in the natural world: family. It is vibrantly illustrated in a warm, vivid and earthy palette by Sara Mulvanny which makes this book particularly wonderful to read. It introduces, with beauty, thought-provoking ways of looking beyond the familiar notion of a family and discover the variety of ways animals care for one another - from elephant herds guided by wise matriarchs to orcas, such as the female Sachi, passing down years of knowledge on hunting to the young ones. The reader can learn how survival and nurture work in the wild with fun facts about how the creatures whose lives are shared in this book coexist with nature. We meet devoted fathers such as the poison dart frog carrying tadpoles to individual pools and the Namaqua sandgrouse flying remarkable distances with water stored in his feathers for his thirsty chicks. We also find the emperor penguins sharing the responsibility of raising a chick and orangutan mothers spending seven or eight years teaching their young the skills they need to survive. I especially loved the book’s emphasis on cooperation and care.
The book also takes a strong stand on conservation and the protection of vulnerable species. Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, Audubon Nature Institute, Borneo Orangutan Survival (BOS) Foundation are a few such organisations caring for orphaned orangutans and elephants and supporting species recovery. Parents and teachers can encourage children aged 5-9 to learn important vocabulary related to environmentalism and conservation provided in the book and inspire them to observe the wildlife around them as curious little minds. This informative book gives a beautiful expansion to the social ideas of community and family in the in the context of natural spaces.
Ishika Tiwari
How to Build A Human
Moira Butterfield, illus. Claire Elsom, pub. Puffin Books
How to Build a Human explores in an engaging, accessible book the cells, tissues, organs and systems that make up our body. First, meet the builderbots, accepting the challenge of building a human body they pull together a range of skills, before introducing the brief of making a human, thinking about the complexity of the human body and what we do with it.
It’s straight in at the cellular level to construct the basic unit of the human body, a cell, as Moria Butterfield skilfully explains our DNA coding and Clare Elsom’s wonderful illustrations show the diversity of the two hundred different kinds of cells that make up the trillions of cells in our body. Seeing a human cell needs a powerful microscope – we’ve only managed to see larger plant cells using school microscopes – but search the web as there are some great images and animation for those curious to know more.
Tissues are more tangible for readers as these can be pulled, poked and prodded – including bones, of which we have two hundred and six, muscles, the different layers of skin needing regular washing to stay clean and healthy, of which we shed thirty to forty thousand cells a minute, and nervous tissue as part of a section on the brain. Later in the book, well-places for an introduction to the circulatory system, we learn about blood. There is a lot of great biology in the book communicated in a style that KS2 and KS3 readers will understand and that will get them excited about human biology.
It’s time for our senses – sight, hearing – and it’s always good to pop into those mouth and nose orifices as well as looking at the other end and what comes out! We also need to cover some important body organs and systems: the heart and our circulatory system; lungs and respiratory system; stomach and digestive system, and this part includes some good advice on nutritional food. Plenty of opportunities are presented across all these subjects for humour and yucky fascinating facts that will surely be shared.
Among all this watch out for Zoomy, a little flying bug on every double spread.
How to Build a Human will make a fun addition to any library and a superb read for curious young minds.
Simon Barrett
Marvolution: A Guide to the Evolutionary Marvels of the Future
Dr. Claire Asher, illus. Fiona Fogg, pub. Bloomsbury Children’s Books
Have you ever wanted to look into the future and see what the animals of our planet will look like in millions of years’ time? This amazing and fantastic book will help children to do just that. It is a unique and unusual subject and covered in a way that is like nothing you will have seen before. Twenty-five extraordinary animals are described by the fictional scientist Professor Beatrice Russel, a time travelling biologist who has returned from the future with her observations about these animals. There is an element of fiction, but it is based on real evolutionary science and very credible facts and theories.
There are five chapters covering invertebrates, birds, reptiles and amphibians, mammals and fish. Each chapter includes a family tree showing how the future creatures come to exist, a brief evolutionary history, a ‘Did You Know’ question, facts and some amazing and very colourful illustrations. A comprehensive glossary is also included and a letter from Professor Beatrice. The animals are strange, fascinating and sometimes scary and unsettling. Some are also not so different from the animals we know today. The human race is extinct in this future world. There is evidence of decaying buildings, rusted machines and most of all rubbish and waste, such as plastic.
The delight of the book is that evolution is explained simply. There is reference to Charles Darwin and his 1859 book On the Origin of Species. Despite a future of warmer weather, deeper oceans and larger deserts, there is hope that we can forge a different path forwards, so that humans may survive further into the future. Stunning illustrations show cows the size of rabbits, raccoons with sabre teeth, giant pigeons, gargantuan bats, vampire butterflies, a trash mole and blind night birds. Children can learn about evolution in a real and scientific way and see how we have mistreated our planet. The mix of scientific fact and fiction creates an educational, fun and delightful book. It encourages children to think and ask questions and it simplifies complex ideas about evolution so that young readers can enjoy and understand them. A wonderful book for curious minds showing how imagination and real science can work together.
Gary Kenworthy
Meet the Invisibles: From Gravity and Gas to Bacteria and Bugs
Mike Barfield, illus. Jess Bradley, pub. Buster Books
Fans of Mike Barfield and Jess Bradley's hugely popular A Day in the Life series (which has sold over 150,000 copies and been translated into over 25 languages worldwide) will feel right at home with Meet the Invisibles. Packed with the same comic-strip style, quirky humour, simple diagrams and vibrant illustrations, this entertaining non-fiction book makes some of science's most complex topics both accessible and enjoyable.
The book is divided into three sections: Only Natural, which explores living things; What's the Matter, focusing on chemistry; and Hi Energy, which introduces readers to the world of physics. Written in a lively first-person narrative, a fascinating cast of characters—including a flea, a virus, a bacterium, a cell and even a gas-filled balloon—guide readers through the invisible world that surrounds us. Along the way, readers discover microscopic organisms, minibeasts, states of matter, the molecules responsible for pleasant and unpleasant smells, light and sound waves, the electromagnetic spectrum, the science behind the colours of the rainbow and much more. Budding scientists will also enjoy learning about dangerous molecules such as sulphur dioxide, CFCs and DDT, before venturing into the exciting worlds of high technology and dark energy.
The graphic novel format, combined with bite-sized facts and plenty of humour, gives Meet the Invisibles instant appeal. Informative, engaging and full of eye-catching illustrations, it is an excellent choice for curious readers aged 8–12 and is sure to inspire them to look more closely at the remarkable invisible world all around them.
Barbara Band
Myths of Japan: Meet the Gods, Creatures, and Heroes of Ancient Japan
Masako Carey, illus. Katie Ponder, pub. Dorling Kindersley
Myths of Japan is the latest title in DK's excellent Ancient Myths series, bringing together more than 25 captivating stories about the gods, goddesses, heroes and magical creatures of ancient Japan. Beautifully illustrated in rich, vibrant colours and presented in a clear, easy-to-read format, it provides an engaging introduction to Japanese mythology for readers aged 7–10 years.
The book is thoughtfully divided into four sections. In the Beginning explores the creation of Japan, its first emperors and the customs, rituals and sacred symbols associated with the country's deities. Love and Loyalty celebrates honour, courage and doing what is right, while Magic and Mystery introduces enchanted objects and memorable tales that reveal timeless lessons, for example, showing that greed often leads to trouble whereas kindness is richly rewarded. Magical Creatures features an entertaining cast of scary, mischievous and lovable beings whose adventures often reflect our own behaviour and choices. Each myth offers a wonderful glimpse into Japan's rich and fascinating storytelling tradition. My favourite section is the final chapter, About the Myths, which provides valuable background information on the history of Japanese mythology, its beliefs, gods and goddesses, mythical beings and legendary places. This additional context helps readers appreciate the stories even more and encourages them to explore further.
A helpful pronunciation guide, glossary and index make the book especially accessible to younger readers who may be discovering Japanese mythology for the first time. Informative, beautifully produced and full of unforgettable tales, Myths of Japan is a superb introduction to one of the world's richest mythological traditions and a welcome addition to any child's bookshelf.
Barbara Band
The Secret Life of Clouds, Birds and Oceans
Moira Butterfield, illus. Vivian Mineker, pub. Happy Yak
The Secret Life of Clouds, Birds and Oceans introduces readers to Casper the Cloud, Speedy the Swift and Tia the Turtle as they explore the wonders of the natural world. This beautifully illustrated collection combines three books from The Secret Life series into one engaging volume, blending storytelling with fascinating scientific facts.
Each section is packed with information presented in a fun and accessible way with text in easily managed chunks as well as ‘short snippets’ of facts from Casper, Speedy and Tia. It would be impossible to cover everything packed into this book in a single review. Readers learn about different types of clouds, rainbows, erosion, hurricanes and tornadoes, as well as the animals that rely on rain. The bird section explains feathers, beaks, birdsong and nest-building, while the ocean chapter explores deep-sea creatures, tides, waves and the incredible migrations of marine animals. Every page offers something new to discover, making it a book that children can return to time and again; and it has important environmental messages about keeping our waters clean, looking after habitats and protecting disappearing species. The book is also enriched with myths and folktales from around the world, such as the Chinese legend of the Cloud Dragon, the Indian story of How the Peacock Got His Feathers, and the Fijian tale The Battle of the Guardians, which explores themes of bullying. These stories add cultural depth and variety.
With its colourful illustrations, friendly characters and wealth of information, The Secret Life of Clouds, Birds and Oceans is an excellent choice for curious readers aged 7–11. It is an entertaining and educational book that children will enjoy returning to again and again.
Barbara Band
Your Wild and Wonderful Brain: Make Your Unique ADHD Brain Work for You!
Alice Harman, illus. Buse Kaçar, Bloomsbury Children’s Books
Alice Harman is someone with ADHD. Diagnosed as an adult, she’s struggled to understand her brain and how best to work with it. She is not a doctor nor an expert but has written this book based upon increasingly available research and her own personal reflection on what has helped her. Your Wild and Wonderful Brain explores what it means to live with ADHD – which often in medical definitions focuses on what people struggle with – but which can have positives that contribute to living a successful life.
Each chapter in the book is an animal. These animals represent one particular trait of ADHD, and are fairly predictable, for example, a magpie represents being distracted by shiny new things, whilst a squirrel represents forgetting things quickly and a cheetah demonstrates the trait of focusing in short bursts. This means readers can dip into chapters that interest them or more easily identify chapters to re-read later. Moreover animals are a great hook to begin exploring specific ADHD traits in a non-confrontational way, opening up our curiosity about how certain animals might signify particular traits.
Alice Harman’s warm, personal tone is encouraging and reassuring, each chapter presenting a balanced evaluation of both the strengths and struggles of a specific ADHD trait as well as strategies to help manage this trait more successfully. She suggests different strategies for working better with each trait, offering practical help for readers to use, experiment with and reflect upon in their own lives. I think this is why it is important that Alice Harman is an ADHDer, to use her words, as she writes with empathy and authenticity as if she is sharing in a journey with the reader, standing in solidarity.
For some fun, each chapter finishes a ‘Brain Break’ with trivial facts, irritating questions about ADHD, games and ADHD-friendly activities. This might mean solving a puzzle, getting up and going on a scavenger hunt around your house or crumpling up some paper to create a piece of art, themed around the animal of the chapter.
Your Wild and Wonderful Brain is a great handbook for ADHDers, changing the debate, being honest about the struggles, but celebrating the strengths too.
Simon Barrett