I love nature study, and I love mindfulness, and I love living books. Here’s a quick review of a book that will incorporate all three! It’s called The Global Forest.
It’s format is in shorter chapters, so you can pick and choose easily what you might read aloud to the kiddos.
A living book, beautifully written, the author Diana Beresford-Kroeger is not only a botanist and medical biochemist, she has a lovely way with words. She writes about science and the natural world like both a poet and a scientist. “The child stood looking up into the tree. From where she stood the tree was so tall, like some church spire probing the sky. She tried to get a glimpse of the tip of the tree. It made her five-year-old legs stagger and buckle.She stepped backward while still staring into the crisp blue sky, sheered with the curtain of river mist. And still there was one more fruit to fall. Just one. She would wait until that last tiny apple fell and the tree, her tree, would have all of its apples on the ground in a red-yellow carpet around her feet. She would then stand in an apple bed of freshly fallen fruit.” The girl goes on to explore Crataegus, and seeds that come from trees. What a literary way to learn about seeds, fruiting trees and gardens!
She includes sections on fun science that will get the kiddos curious and excited about the world. How dogs can find the right grass to eat? What makes hippos sweat a red-orange sweat that acts as a sun-screen. (For real! Isn’t that cool?)
You can visit her website at Calloftheforest.ca and learn more about her documentary movie, Call of the Forest. You can also check out her other books (I have Arboretum America: A Philosophy of the Forest in my To-Read pile) or check out the app for learning how to plant a tree, and what trees are good for your area.
Her books are science, literature, botany, nature study all in one!
