Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Evening walks.

There is something about the quality of light
on summer evenings that I dearly love.
And its kind of magical how a bit of last minute
inspiration, can change the dinner, shower, bed
routine and see us setting off on a little adventure.

Both of my little boys are always avid collectors
of all sorts of treasures on our walks. But on our
most recent walk, I watched with delight and
realised how much they had both been inspired
by "Enid Blyton's Nature Lover's Book". There
was lots of extra careful looking and we came home
with well above the usual stash of treasures.

I only recently discovered this book, a facsimile
edition of a 1944 publication and purchased it
for my big boy's birthday. It is a beautiful book,
with lots of lovely B&W 1940's illustrations and
some colour plates. It centres around a series of
nature walks, that 3 children take, with their
neighbour, through the seasons. Each chapter
describes one of their walks.

What shines through is Enid Blyton's love of
Natural History. Although I am not a big fan of
her other work, I love the interesting information
that she weaves into these stories, and the simple
unpretentious way that it is done. The children
try to guess which botanical families the flowers
belong to, and why they got their names. They
listen to the different parts of bird calls and identify
nests. Above all I think they become keen observers
and it is this passion that resonated with my boys.



1 comment:

Merenia said...

Hello Stephanie, I had no idea this book existed. Thanks for the tip - it looks like an urgent bookdepository order may be coming up.