This marvellous book is subtitled ‘Finding Wild Things With My Kids’ but I wouldn’t let that put you off even if, like me, you have never had any children of your own. As someone often called upon to talk to other people’s children about nature, I suspect that all educators, whether professionals in the teaching profession or didactic aunts or uncles will find it speaks to their experience. What to share and how are constant dilemmas and Richard Smyth is acute and hilarious on the rival claims of wonder and disgust when it comes to captivating the curious young. Having led hundreds of school assemblies over the decades I can testify to there being a photo finish required to decide which was the most popular- the time I accidentally decapitated the Virgin Mary or when I described, in gory detail, the life cycle of the Large Blue Butterfly.
This book is structured around the author’s explorations of nature with his two very small children. Their discoveries together of bird’s nests and owl pellets, their repeated walks in the local wood and their occasional forays to the coast to peer into rock pools. But each find provides an opportunity to think about what the natural world is actually like, and Smyth not only turns to what naturalists and scientists have revealed but tries to see the world through his children’s eyes and keep in mind the rapid changes and losses all around. I can’t imagine that there are many other nature writers who can as convincingly write about the agonising over-suffering of Charles Darwin, the joy of ugly creatures, and the cultural significance of the Octonauts.
And it is impossible not to mention Smyth’s humour, which is sometimes wry and at times verges on the nonsensical, in a good way. He ponders what a nation, where constant ‘manufactured bug panics’ about ‘killer wasps’ and’ four-inch crane-flies’ are common, will make of actual wolves. And has fantastic extended fun about why the illustrations in ‘The Gruffalo’ totally contradict the plot, and why that is such a good thing.
I loved this book from beginning to end and think that the author’s precious combination of storytelling skill, sharp critical thinking, satire, and baffled but adoring daddishness, make this a precious and distinct addition to the genre of nature writing.
- The Jay The Birch And The Limpetshell by Richard Smyth is out now and published by Icon Books (£16.99). To order a copy go to iconbooks.com
Ian Tattum
Ian Tattum is a priest in the Church of England who writes occasional pieces about the people who shaped the history of science and human and animal travel-real and fictional.
