As I write Hermione’s twelfth year is drawing to a close. The years of innocence are waning. But we have had the good fortune to live through a period when a child’s mind is wide open and as absorbent as a sponge. Blessed years of exploration and discovery, fat and full of the natural world, which surrounds her here … the mountains and forests and ospreys, eagles, otters and pine martens of a beautiful land.’
NATURE’S CHILD is John Lister-Kaye’s account of bringing up his daughter to appreciate the nature around her so beloved to himself. It is also a moving meditation on that world, and on their relationship, as he shows her how caterpillars metamorphose into moths; how beavers build dams in Norway; how half a million sea birds migrate to Shetland once a year to breed; how white rhinos behave in the wilds of Swaziland; how baby polar bears are raised on an archipelago in the Arctic Ocean. As John puts it: ‘Life is a collection of fragments of time charged with deeply personal sensation and meaning … we had watched polar bears for a few minutes, but the recollection of those images are locked in for life. What is love if not time given in joy and delight?
NATURE’S CHILD is John Lister-Kaye’s account of bringing up his daughter to appreciate the nature around her so beloved to himself. It is also a moving meditation on that world, and on their relationship, as he shows her how caterpillars metamorphose into moths; how beavers build dams in Norway; how half a million sea birds migrate to Shetland once a year to breed; how white rhinos behave in the wilds of Swaziland; how baby polar bears are raised on an archipelago in the Arctic Ocean. As John puts it: ‘Life is a collection of fragments of time charged with deeply personal sensation and meaning … we had watched polar bears for a few minutes, but the recollection of those images are locked in for life. What is love if not time given in joy and delight?
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Reviews
An entrancing utterance of controlled rapture
This is a moving a lyrical study of a young girl enjoying the freedom of a country upbringing. Written by one of our premier wildlife authors and beautifully illustrated by Derek Robertson, it offers many pleasures.
There are not many modern books about wildlife that are so perceptive, so enjoyable and such a throughly good read.
It's the book's finely drawn details that beguile... highly recommended.