World Book Day, 2024
Last year, I shared ten of the best nature and photography-related books I’d read for World Book Day. This year, I thought I’d share five of the best I’d read in the last twelve months, plus a bonus children’s book.
A Life on Our Planet: My Witness Statement and a Vision for the Future
by Sir David Attenborough
If this was just a biography, of course it would have been great. But this book is so much more than that. Only David Attenborough could write about climate change and the devastation we’ve caused to our planet with such eloquence, warmth, and balance. After reading this, I felt educated, terrified, and—thanks to his solution-oriented perspective—optimistic all at once.
Beloved Beasts: Fighting for Life in an Age of Extinction
by Michelle Nijhuis
From international efforts to protect endangered species to individuals who plant native, butterfly-friendly plants in their gardens, it’s easy to take the conservation movement for granted. Millions of people are dedicating their time, money, and scientific minds to conserving our wildlife daily, and most people understand the importance of those efforts. Still, it hasn’t always been that way. Beloved Beasts tells the stories of the brilliant people who pioneered conservation, along with the missteps and dark motivations that have led us to where we are today. Another tough subject that was surprisingly entertaining to learn about!
A Most Remarkable Creature: The Hidden Life and Epic Journey of the World’s Smartest Birds of Prey
by Jonathan Meiburg
I don’t think I knew anything about caracaras before I picked up this book, but thanks to a great recommendation from The Backyard Naturalist on Instagram, I learned a lot and thoroughly enjoyed this. I found the comparisons with peregrines particularly interesting as they’re a species I’ve spent some time observing.
Life on Earth
by Sir David Attenborough
This book helped to fill many gaps in my understanding of how life evolved on Earth. I understood the basic evolutionary process that shapes species over time, and, without being in a way a biologist, I had a grasp of how specialized and diverse life on this planet can be. But, having such a gifted narrator lead me from the first single-celled organisms through all the twists, turns, and forks in the road that evolution has taken wasn’t simply interesting reading; it felt essential to understand. This is the second of two David Attenborough books on this list, and I felt like both should be on every school’s curriculum.
The Log from the Sea of Cortez
by John Steinbeck
I love John Steinbeck’s writing. His fiction includes some of my favorite novels, including East of Eden. His occasional nonfiction and semibiographical work is excellent, too. The Log from the Sea of Cortez falls into that category. I got a real kick from learning about the marine biologist Ed Ricketts, who inspired the character Doc in books like Cannery Row.
It’s Fall!
by Linda Glaser and Susan Swan
I loved It’s Fall! just as much as my one-year-old son, Gavin. We must have read this book dozens of times at his insistence. Still, with beautiful illustrations and prose that detail all the wildlife, weather, and experience of autumn to life in rich, poetic detail, I was happy to read it every single time.
