Michael Chinery

Beautifully illustrated, some as pen & ink details of procedures, some as color washed scenes, a very few photographs. The author is apparently British (some specific terms give him away) but the book has been vetted for American species inclusion.
There is an amazing variety of activities and ideas introduced in this short (190 pp) book. Of course, if you are passionate about any particular area, you'll need further field guides. Chinery starts by suggesting how to make a nature notebook, show more then tells us various ways to observe nature which will help us fill our book. A sample: pond dipping, rearing tadpoles, beachcombing, making casts of footprints, studying bird pellets, how to watch birds, making a "wormery", pitfall traps for small animals, studying spider webs, plant galls, animal skeletons, making a plant survey, experimenting with growth conditions, exploring the landscape, wildlife sound recording & photography, country code (nature ethics). show less

My trip to Spain May 2015, like so many before had me asking my hosts and anyone else who would listen, what THIS creature was, or THAT one, or that one over THERE and having received, like all the other times, mostly unsatisfactory answers, in a fit of spontaneous frustration, I bought this book from Amazon on my mobile, whilst up a mountain in Andalusia. It was waiting for me when I came home.

The book is brilliant. Informative, covers just about all the points that someone show more who-knows-not-very-much, could wish for. And the illustrations (much better than photographs) are so much more instructive. This book (small enough to call pocket-size) is a fantastic source of identification and knowledge on all types of insects, butterflies – and just bugs in general and covers most of Western Europe show less

I enjoyed reading this book for many different reasons. I liked this informational book because it was very descriptive and detailed. For example, the author included many text features that would have students understand the information in this book. The author included a table of contents, maps, images, captions, etc. This was beneficial for readers because they were able to learn about different people and places in the rainforest. The images of this book were also very detailed because show more they had been taken in real life. The author included pictures from the real world of people and places from the rainforest. This allowed readers to view images that were real and give them the visualizations from places around the world. This informational book captured reader’s attention with all of the information and picture scattered around the book. There was a lot of information in this book therefore, I do not think this book would be designed for younger children. The big idea or message of this book was to teach readers about different places and people who live in the rainforest and how forests threatened. show less

I really enjoyed reading this book because it provided a lot of information about grassland animals. It doesn't drag on and fill the pages up with words, its more of a paragraph of information about an animal then there is a very detailed illustration of the animal in its habitat. The book also consists of did you know boxes and fun facts boxes for each animal that you read about. For example, a lion fact is a group of lions is known as a pride.The message of this book is to provide show more information about grassland animals in a fun and easy to read context that is easy to understand. show less