As a child growing up in the Pacific Northwest, my pockets were often full of rocks. Rocks are beautiful and soothing to hold. They are ubiquitous treasures, available to all. But even more than this, rocks are portals to the past—to a time before humans, before animals, before plants, before microbes. I am endlessly fascinated by the stories rocks tell and by the secrets they share with us through their form and structure. I still collect rocks, and now I also write picture books about science and nature for children. The books on this list are all wonder-filled. I hope you enjoy them!
Do stones sit still or do they constantly travel and transform? Both are true!
This lyrical work of fiction explores the stillness and permanency of a single stone. As the world around the stone whirls with activity, the stone remains in place. Though it may seem to change, appearing purple in the moonlight, for example, and though it is perceived and used in a wide range of ways by a wide variety of creatures, it doesn’t budge.
This soothing story invites children to think about the passage of time and to contemplate all a stone experiences as it sits in stillness.
The brilliant follow-up to the Caldecott Honor-winning and New York Times bestselling picture book They All Saw a Cat by Brendan Wenzel!
A Stone Sat Still tells the story of a seemingly ordinary rock-but to the animals that use it, it is a resting place, a kitchen, a safe haven...even an entire world.
This is a gorgeous exploration of perspective, perception, and the passage of time, with an underlying environmental message that is timely and poignant.
* Filled with stunning illustrations in cut paper, pencil, collage, and paint
* Soothing rhythms invite reading aloud and bedtime snuggles
* Introduces concepts…
Whatever story I’m telling, I try to write female characters who are smart, funny, kind, and ultimately empowering; characters that drive the narrative, not the other way around. It is really important for me that my female characters have agency – that they actively move the story forward, make decisions and step up. Those are the kind of stories I like to read too. The books on this list are some of my favourites and all contain strong female protagonists. I hope you enjoy.
Where the World Turns Wild plays on one of my biggest fears about the future – a world without nature. Juniper and her little brother Bear live in a walled city where nature has been almost completely eradicated following the outbreak of a disease. What remains is a tightly controlled and terrifying society that they must escape. Juniper’s bravery and her capacity for survival are driven by the fierce, protective love she has for her little brother. This is an adventure story like no other and one I have returned to time and again.
Animals, trees, flowers, our city forbids them all...
Juniper Greene lives in a walled city from which nature has been banished, following the outbreak of a deadly man-made disease many years earlier. While most people seem content to live in such a cage, she and her little brother Bear have always known about their resistance to the disease, and dream of escaping into the wild. To the one place humans have survived outside of cities. To where their mother is.
When scientists discover that the siblings provide the key to fighting the disease, the pair must flee for their lives.…
As an educator and author with more than 35 years of experience in outdoor education, I’ve come to realize that children need nature more than ever. I wonder if children are more lonely today because they feel disconnected from the very life systems that nourish us all. There are rising levels of anxiety, depression, and mental health concerns. At the same time, more studies are showing the tremendous health benefits of time spent outside. I hope that all of us take the time to connect to our “neighbourwood,” and that we come to recognize that our community is more than the buildings, houses, and streets and also consists of plants, animals, insects, birds, water, and air. Let us create spaces where both people and nature can thrive so we can create a greener, healthier tomorrow.
What an imaginative, colourful and fun way to engage children with nature! This book helps children look at nature with fresh eyes by showing them how you can create beautiful crafts using only natural materials.
Eye-catching photography and clear descriptions help readers to easily follow the steps involved in creating each craft. There is a nature craft for every week of the year!
Take a leaf out of this book and combine connecting with nature with crafting at home. Using materials foraged sustainably from the great outdoors, Barbora Kurcova shows you how to create beautiful, visually inspiring art, gifts, and home accents and accessories.
This collection of clever ideas is packed with small, no-fuss projects that are demonstrated using step-by-step photography, with one engaging project for each week of the year - all of which are easily achievable and great for family crafting.
As a child, one of my favorite places was in the top branches of a tree. From up there I could watch the world pass by, remaining invisible. I could make up stories about the world below and no one would challenge me. The second best place for me was inside the story of a book, the kind that took you to magical places where children always found a way to win the day. I knew when I “grew up” I would write one of those empowering books. I became a middle school teacher and have since read many wonderful books for this age. Enjoy my list of favorites.
Where do you turn when the only adult who gets you, your grandpa, is gone, and the world seems to be in self-destruct mode?
On his 12th birthday, Thomas runs away to the forest he used to visit with Grandpa. It is dying. Will saving it from a deadly parasite bring him closer to Grandpa or make his world safer? Before he can find out, he is enticed into a magical world under an attack of a different kind.
Welcomed by a garden of talking plants, mind-reading creatures, tree-climbing, nature-loving beings, Thomas conquers the stinging, prickly hedge that guards the portal to this alternate world. At last, a place where he fits in. A place that needs him. But what about his and Grandpa’s forest?
“…a magical book...” John Perkins, New York Times best-selling author
I’ve dedicated my career to renewable energy, because I think it really will save us from climate change disaster. Solar, wind, and advanced energy storage will usher us into the 21st century. I’ve seen many innovative people and companies use technology to create a better future. We still have a long uphill battle to reverse climate change, but we now have the technology that can help save our planet. It is time to implement it. These five books (in very different ways) give us the tools and understanding of how renewable energy will shape the future.
The impending doom of climate change has been stressing me out for over a decade. It feels like my son will inherit a world that resembles the dystopian futures of Mad Max or Blade Runner. But the future we’re entering into will be more nuanced than that.
This book helped me realize that the future may not be as bleak as I had once imagined. The environmental alarmists may have good intentions, but their efforts might be causing more harm than good.
Climate change is real but it's not the end of the world. It is not even our most serious environmental problem.
Michael Shellenberger has been fighting for a greener planet for decades. He helped save the world's last unprotected redwoods. He co-created the predecessor to today's Green New Deal. And he led a successful effort by climate scientists and activists to keep nuclear plants operating, preventing a spike of emissions.
But in 2019, as some claimed "billions of people are going to die," contributing to rising anxiety, including among adolescents, Shellenberger decided that, as a lifelong…
Daisy is searching for her mother, an eco-journalist who has gone missing in the Amazon. When I am wearing my other hat, I am a travel journalist who specialises in plants and gardens I could not fail to be intrigued by this situation.
Daisy finds a portal in Kew Gardens and enters a universe called Greenwild, where a group called The Botanists are preserving magical flora. Full of exciting adventures that children find entertaining, I loved this book because it nevertheless subtly indicates that plants are a very real source of magic.
Open the door to a spellbinding world where the wilderness is alive and a deep magic rises from the earth itself. Greenwild: The World Behind the Door is the first book in Pari Thomson's extraordinary fantasy series with an environmental twist.
'Greenwild is a thrilling adventure that takes seed in your imagination and runs wild!' - M. G. Leonard, author of Beetle Boy
Daisy Thistledown has escaped from boarding school and has a mystery to solve. Her search for her missing mother will lead her across London and through a hidden doorway to another world, filled with plants and bursting…
I’m a British author who has always had a fascination with magical realism and novels that blend the serious with the strange. For that reason, though I write literary fiction for adults, I take so much of my inspiration from children’s literature. There’s something so simple about how kids’ books stitch the extraordinary into the every day without having to overexplain things. I now live not far from the forest that inspired A. A. Milne’s Hundred Acre Wood, and my latest novel is set in and inspired by this part of rural England–with all the mystery and magic that a trip into the woods entails.
One of the most inventive novels I’ve read in recent years, this beautiful Pyrenean patchwork is supposed to evoke the orchestra of voices of the mountain region in which the book takes place.
Thus, you have the points of view of local farmers and their families, but also of the mountains themselves, of storm clouds and baskets of mushrooms and plenty of animals, wild and domesticated. The Deer takes us on a delightful tangent, but the most memorable chapter might be the one from the point of view of the spirited, breathlessly energetic dog.
"Sola pushes past the limits of human experience to tell a story of instinct and earth-time that is irresistible in its jagged glory." - C Pam Zhang, author of How Much of These Hills is Gold
When Domenec - mountain-dweller, father, poet, dreamer - dies suddenly, struck by lightning, he leaves behind two small children, Mia and Hilari, to grow up wild among the looming summits of the Pyrenees and the ghosts of the Spanish civil war.
But then Hilari dies too, and his sister is forced to face life's struggles and joys alone. As the years tumble by, the…
I am a writer and researcher from North Yorkshire, England. Although I’ve written extensively on pre-cinema history (for example, I co-wrote the BAFTA long-listed documentary, The First Film) I have also researched little-known stories connected with the natural world, particularly the beautiful Yorkshire Moors, where I live. My upcoming travelogue The Witches’ Waywill combine nature-writing with original historical research, and will be published by Open Space Books in the Autumn. I have long been an admirer of the poetryof Edward Thomas – bringing his long-forgotten fictionto a new audience has been a real passion project of mine.
This is similar toWild Isles – a vast celebration of nature incorporating fiction, non-fiction, and poetry – but this time with its focus on the beautiful wild North of Britain.
It’s exciting to see so many different aspects of the area brought out and the inclusion of lesser-known contemporary writers such as Katie Hale, Loren Cafferty, and Graham Mort alongside greats such as William Wordsworth and Charlotte Brontë.
So often neglected, so often stereotyped, the North is viewed here by those that know it, through clear eyes but with understandable adoration. I particularly enjoyed the descriptions of the moors, the dark green and grey wilds inhabited by curlew, kite, and hare.
This is the place where the Brontës created their epic romances and where contemporary writers sought solace during lockdown. The land continues to be a source of inspiration and it is gratifying to see it celebrated in this…
"Curlews give their liquid, burbling call, a call of pure happiness, the music of the fells." Ella Pontefract, 1936, Wensleydale
The North of England abounds with beauty, from unspoiled beaches in Northumberland to the dramatic Lakeland Fells, for so long celebrated by writers and artists. Wide estuaries, winding rivers, sheer cliffs, rushing waterfalls, ancient woodland, limestone pavements, and miles of hedgerows and drystone walls sustainably built and rebuilt over centuries - all form part of its rich heritage.
But these are, too, contested and depleted landscapes. Today the curlew's call is isolated, and many other species are in decline. Industry,…
I’m a Colorado gal living in Maine, where I make the most of the long winters and gloomy springs by spending as much time as I can outside in our 20 acres of woods and fields. I hiked the Colorado Trail twice, in 1996 with my husband and in 2016 with my husband and three kids. My book tells the story of this second hike, as well as the natural and environmental history of Colorado. I’m a Maine Master Naturalist, and I’m passionate about connecting people to the natural world through nature journaling and nature writing workshops.
Until I discovered this book in my early twenties, most of my reading about the natural world had come from male writers who encountered that world in a spirit of discovery and domination.
Dillard’s relationship with the creek she visited seemingly daily was a different approach entirely—she came as an acolyte, ready to watch, listen, and learn what the wild things of that stream had to teach her. Her writing is introspective and contemplative, and it swings wildly between esoteric readings and embodied experiences on the ground, creating a breathless, mind-body reading experience.
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek has continued to change people's lives for over thirty years. A passionate and poetic reflection on the mystery of creation with its beauty on the one hand and cruelty on the other, it has become a modern American literary classic in the tradition of Thoreau. Living in solitude in the Blue Ridge Mountains near Roanoke, Virginia, and observing the changing seasons, the flora and fauna, the author reflects on the nature of creation and of the God who set it in motion. Whether the images are cruel or lovely, the language is memorably beautiful and poetic,…
I’m an Irish novelist and poet. Fiction writers are perhaps better described by their fascinations than by any expertise as such. I can’t claim to be an expert in anything, but I am easily fascinated. My educational background is in philosophy, but I’ve always had a tremendous interest in the natural world too, and my writing tends to reflect that. When it comes to fiction, I love books that throw new layers on old surfaces. With nonfiction, I love anything that can explain something. Nonfiction loves to adorn itself with fiction, while fiction tends to cling to nonfiction like flesh on a bone. So my list is mostly bones, and one big sea pearl.
I’m biased here, because I translated this book from Portuguese, but it’s a slender little thing with a huge personality.
Ailton Krenak is an indigenous leader from Brazil, and this essay is his attempt to show where human civilization has gone wrong and what we might do to save it.
In a mix of sigh, outburst, yawn, and eulogy, Krenak suggests some simple paradigm shifts that could make all the difference, but the basic idea is clear: there’s no point in trying to change what we do without first changing how we see—and that’s maybe a stretch too far for us.
"Ailton Krenak's ideas inspire, washing over you with every truth-telling sentence. Read this book." - Tanya Talaga, bestselling author of Seven Fallen Feathers
Indigenous peoples have faced the end of the world before. Now, humankind is on a collective march towards the abyss. Global pandemics, extreme weather, and massive wildfires define this era many now call the Anthropocene.
From Brazil comes Ailton Krenak, renowned Indigenous activist and leader, who demonstrates that our current environmental crisis is rooted in society's flawed concept of "humanity" - that human beings are superior to other forms of nature and are justified in exploiting it…
As a child growing up in the Pacific Northwest, my pockets were often full of rocks. Rocks are beautiful and soothing to hold. They are ubiquitous treasures, available to all. But even more than this, rocks are portals to the past—to a time before humans, before animals, before plants, before microbes. I am endlessly fascinated by the stories rocks tell and by the secrets they share with us through their form and structure. I still collect rocks, and now I also write picture books about science and nature for children. The books on this list are all wonder-filled. I hope you enjoy them!
When I take the time to really look at a rock and contemplate the journey that brought it to me, I am humbled. I’m reminded that I’m a small part of something bigger, an experience shared by the characters in this gorgeous picture book about rocks, intergenerational relationships, and Indigenous knowledge.
In Where Wonder Grows, Grandma leads her granddaughters to a special garden, and together they explore a collection of rocks. Grandma encourages the girls to look closely at each rock and to think about how it formed and all it has been through. She helps the girls see that rocks are “alive with wisdom” and that nature is full of wonder.
A children’s picture book about a grandmother bonding with her granddaughters as she teaches them how much they can learn from nature just by being curious.
Grandma knows that there is wondrous knowledge to be found everywhere you can think to look. She takes her girls to their special garden, and asks them to look over their collection of rocks, crystals, seashells, and meteorites to see what marvels they have to show. “They were here long before us and know so much more about our world than we ever will,”…
