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Nature's Child

Sir John Lister-Kaye author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Little, Brown Book Group

Published:3rd Mar '05

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

Nature's Child cover

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A wonderfully lyrical look, through the eyes of John Lister-Kaye and his young daughter, at the workings of nature - from jackdaws in Scotland, to fossils in Lyme Regis, to scorpions in Botswana.

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?

An entrancing utterance of controlled rapture * Magnus Magnusson *
There are not many modern books about wildlife that are so perceptive, so enjoyable and such a throughly good read. * BIRDS MAGAZINE *
It's the book's finely drawn details that beguile... highly recommended. * BBC WILDLIFE MAGAZINE *
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. * SCOTS MAGAZINE *

ISBN: 9780349117607

Dimensions: 198mm x 126mm x 15mm

Weight: 230g

208 pages