Here are 78 books that Sprout Lands fans have personally recommended if you like
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My first true religion was being a boy alone in the woods and feeling a deep connection to nature in all its aspects. I felt a connection with all life and knew myself to be an animal—and gloried in it. Since then, I've learned how vigorously humans fight our animal nature, estranging us from ourselves and the planet. Each of these books invites us to get over ourselves and connect with all life on Earth.
This book blew me away. I loved how it was told with a range of characters and stories converging into a single whole—like the forest and the trees. I learned more about trees than I ever thought I would care to know and loved every minute of it.
There's nothing more humbling, perhaps, than the vast forests that blanket our planet, and this novel and its unforgettable characters made me feel that in my bones. I'll never look at a tree or planet Earth quite the same way again.
The Overstory, winner of the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction, is a sweeping, impassioned work of activism and resistance that is also a stunning evocation of-and paean to-the natural world. From the roots to the crown and back to the seeds, Richard Powers's twelfth novel unfolds in concentric rings of interlocking fables that range from antebellum New York to the late twentieth-century Timber Wars of the Pacific Northwest and beyond. There is a world alongside ours-vast, slow, interconnected, resourceful, magnificently inventive, and almost invisible to us. This is the story of a handful of people who learn how to see…
I am a rising literary star, crafting captivating narratives that blend classic and contemporary themes. My work, like Tolkien, Lovecraft, and King, delves into the darker side of humanity and explores complex characters in intricate worlds. My unique perspective and deep understanding of storytelling make my book recommendations invaluable. I have apassion for the craft, offering insightful analysis and curating diverse reading lists. By introducing readers to classic works, I foster a deeper appreciation for the art of storytelling.
I yearn to lose myself in the intricate tapestry of Tolkien's world, where every word is a brushstroke on the canvas of imagination. I am captivated by the allure of ancient languages and the power of storytelling to transport the reader to realms beyond reality.
The epic struggle between good and evil, the weight of destiny, and the enduring bonds of friendship resonate deeply within me. I am eager to embark on this perilous journey, to witness the rise and fall of heroes, and to confront the ultimate test of courage and will.
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In ancient times the Rings of Power were crafted by the Elven-smiths, and Sauron, the Dark Lord, forged the One Ring, filling it with his own power so that he could rule all others. But the One Ring was taken from him, and though he sought it throughout Middle-earth, it remained lost to him. After many ages it fell by chance into the hands of the hobbit Bilbo Baggins.
I am passionate about the selected books because they have a unique way of broadening one's horizons and inspiring change in life. Their diverse narratives and profound insights invite all of us to discover new perspectives, challenge our beliefs, and deepen our understanding of the world.
I enjoyed this book specifically because it illustrates trees as social creatures, talking and sharing with each other and building relationships. Peter Wohlleben really opened my eyes to the hidden underground network in forests.
The way Peter tells the story of trees' lives makes it so relatable. He tells the story of trees' unique lives in such an approachable and familiar way, describing how they "feel" pain, "taste" chemicals, and "hear" sounds.
I found the way Wohlleben animates complex scientific ideas through captivating prose most appealing. Deepening my personal relationship with nature.
"A paradigm-smashing chronicle of joyous entanglement that will make you acknowledge your own entanglement in the ancient and ever-new web of being."--Charles Foster, author of Being a Beast Are trees social beings? In this international bestseller, forester and author Peter Wohlleben convincingly makes the case that, yes, the forest is a social network. He draws on groundbreaking scientific discoveries to describe how trees are like human families: tree parents live together with their children, communicate with them, support them as they grow, share nutrients with those who are sick or struggling, and even warn each other of impending dangers. Wohlleben…
Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctor—and only woman—on a remote Everest climb in Tibet.
Growing up between the “wood district” in northern Austria and the woodland-rich province of Nova Scotia in Canada many of my favorite childhood memories took place in forests of all shapes and sizes. It must have been this constant exposure that ignited my passion for everything trees and forests and ultimately inspired me to train as a cabinet maker, study woodland ecology and even travel around the world exploring the multitude of fantastic flavor trees have to offer. Along the way, it was the books on this list that kept on fueling my passion and taught me to love trees even more deeply.
A gorgeously illustrated book detailing how trees changed our world. It is a book exactly to my liking as it perfectly blends scientific information with fascinating stories and insights, making it highly interesting for both the laymen and the professional. It takes pride in being placed on my coffee table where I keep on randomly opening it several times a week, discovering something new every time. This way I am still joyfully reading it, although I have already acquired it months ago.
"Wonderful stories and in-depth information you will normally never find in books about trees." - Piet Oudolf, Landscape Designer and creator of the planting design for New York's High Line
"Entwining fascinating facts about 100 trees with inspiring stories of their importance to ancient civilizations, trade, religious and pagan beliefs, wellbeing and medicinal uses over the ages, this delightful and well-researched book provokes curiosity on every page." - Dr. Alexandra Wagstaffe, Eden Project Learning
The Story of Trees takes the reader on a visual journey from some of the earliest known tree species on our planet to the latest fruit…
Trees have been important to me throughout my life. I was lucky to grow up surrounded by ancient woodland in the English countryside. When most of that woodland was felled in the 1970s it made me think deeply about the importance of plants to people. I was privileged later, to spend time with indigenous peoples in Latin America learning about what trees and plants mean to them. I now write about how plants are perceived and used. After several children's books I wrote Plants For People which describes the plants we use in our daily lives and Ancient Trees which celebrates tree species that live for over a thousand years.
I like this book because, while drawing on a number of other sources on this theme, it introduces us, in relatively few words per chapter,to the importance of a range of tree species to people, in a great variety of ways.
Selecting 80 species - from England’s ‘London Plane’ to the ‘Sugar Maple’ of Canada - the book takes us on a journey around the world, by geographical region, summarizing key botanical information about each one and giving us examples of its significance or uses, past and/or present, often surprising or little known.
Each chapter has been beautifully illustrated by Lucille Clerk.
"Beautiful to behold and to read" - THE SUNDAY TIMES
"An arboreal odyssey" - NATURE
"One of the most quietly beautiful books of the year" - DAILY MAIL
"Jonathan Drori's deep-seated love of nature is contagious in this tree-by-tree journey across countries and continents. A book to take your time over" - WIRED
Jonathan Drori's number one bestseller, now available in paperback!
Bestselling author and environmentalist Jonathan Drori follows in the footsteps of Phileas Fogg as he tells the stories of 80 magnificent trees from all over the globe.
In Around the World in 80 Trees, Jonathan Drori uses plant…
I did a master's in Environmental Policy, and at the end of that year, I thought, "this is all very well, but there’s no point designing these policies if no one wants them." My response to the environmental crisis is to try to open people’s eyes to the beauty and wonder of Nature. If you pay close attention, you start to develop an expansive sense of the ordinary: Creation is stranger, more mysterious, and more wonderful than we can imagine. This in turn helps us to love the world more deeply, and we tend to look after things that we love.
This was the book that made me look again at trees, seeing them for the incredible organisms that they are. Deakin goes on an amazing adventure from Suffolk to Kazakhstan, Australia, and beyond, trying to get to the heart of why wood and trees have such profound meaning for us. If you like Wildwood, you could also try Waterlog, in which he wild-swims his way through the British Isles. He’s the perfect companion for the armchair adventurer, and a very genial writer.
Here, published for the first time in the United States, is the last book by Roger Deakin, famed British nature writer and icon of the environmentalist movement. In Deakin's glorious meditation on wood, the "fifth element" -- as it exists in nature, in our culture, and in our souls -- the reader accompanies Deakin through the woods of Britain, Europe, Kazakhstan, and Australia in search of what lies behind man's profound and enduring connection with trees.
Deakin lives in forest shacks, goes "coppicing" in Suffolk, swims beneath the walnut trees of the Haut-Languedoc, and hunts bushplums with Aboriginal women in…
The constellation we know as Taurus goes all the way back to cave paintings of aurochs at Lascaux. This book traces the story of the bull in the sky, a journey through the history of what has become known as the sacred bull.
I’ve had myriad careers in my life but the through-line has always been Shakespeare. I became smitten with the “words, words, words” seeing a production of Twelfth Night in 3rd grade and it’s been a passion ever since. Acting led to being a “Journalist, Editor, Speaker, Spy” but everything I’ve done was to fund my secret joy of being in a dusty old archive, transcribing manuscripts. Even though my first favorite book was Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden (that was already taken here!), I wasn’t that ‘outdoorsy’, but when the wonderful Japanese artist Sumié Hasegawa showed me her Botanical Shakespeare drawings, I got excited about approaching Shakespeare in a totally new way.
It seems as though Peter Wohlleben'sThe Hidden Life of Treeskicked off a slew of new books on seeing nature from a fresh perspective. Learning that trees communicate, as do other plants, warning and protecting each other is a sort of modern, scientific parlance for what in Shakespeare’s day might have been the fairyland antics in the anima of plants. But Thirteen Ways takes it a step further, opening an unexpected sensorial ‘conversation’ with our arboreal kin. Naso may be “smelling out the odouriferous flowers” in Love’s Labours Lost but Haskell has us inhaling deeply these silent sentinels that populate our lives with scant acknowledgment, with “every aroma is an invitation to stories of interconnection between trees and people.” And he proceeds to tell us some stories that make you ache for the intimacy of knowing a tree so well. I can’t wait to be able to identify a…
'My favourite book of the year' - Kate Humble, Radio Times
'This is a book for literary connoisseurs, fact-lovers and environmentalists. In short, it is a book about trees and people, for everyone.' - BBC Countryfile
'Eclectic, brilliant and beautifully written, David Haskell reboots our aromatic memory reminding us of how our lives are intertwined with the wonder of trees. A treat not to be sneezed at.' - Sir Peter Crane, FRS
'Thirteen Ways to Smell a Tree is a transportive olfactory journey through the forest that sets the sense tingling. Every chapter summons a new aroma: leaf litter and…
It was disappointing comparing the rich diversity of animals on colorful book pages to the reality of forests, where I could only see trees. But as I learned about plants and I became a plant ecologist, I realized that plants have to be extremely tough because they can’t run away from dangers or animals who want to eat them. I studied plants in coastal habitats in California, Central America and Florida, and in forests in the Midwest. I love seeing how they change throughout the season and how they interact. I wish everyone would read as many books about trees as construction trucks!
We think the forest is made up of trees, but this book shows us how some trees are connected underground by mycorrhizal fungi. I love trees, but we have to give the little guys some credit too, and sometimes ‘the little guys,’ i.e., underground fungi, are not so little. Fungi to the rescue!
I like how this book shows that in the case of Douglas fir trees and some other species, nutrients can travel between trees and support new tree seedlings as they grow in the shadow of giant neighboring trees, waiting for their turn to soak up the sunlight. I think of this book as a children’s version of Finding the Mother Tree by Suzanne Simard.
This captivating book explores the real connection and communication that runs underground between trees in the forest. The well-researched details about trees' own social network will help readers see that the natural world's survival depends on staying connected and helping others-just like us! The fascinating mycorrhizal fungi network runs underground through the roots of trees in the forest allowing for connection and communication. Readers will discover that trees have their own social network to help each other survive and thrive. Listen to the Language of the Trees captures the magic of talking trees that take care of their neighbors (not…
I’ve been getting kids out into nature as an environmental education professional for over 30 years, in the garden, in the mountains, at the seashore, and in nearby nature. My life’s work, whether I am writing or teaching, is to help people experience the wonder of the natural world. I believe that children and adults need access to nature to grow and thrive, to find peace in a busy world, and to connect with each other. I know that, just like weeds, we can find a way to navigate the challenges in our lives when we connect with nature’s sustaining goodness wherever we find it.
Behind weeds, trees are perhaps the most common plant many kids will encounter in their day to day lives, and another way children can access nature near home and school. And while trees are complex living things at the apex of the plant kingdom, they often are unnoticed and underappreciated. This beautiful lyrical picture book gives children a context to explore what a tree can do through kid-sized comparisons to what children can also do. Use it to help children explore one of the most common features of both urban and rural landscapes: trees.
Two siblings imagine life as a tree, and envision what they would hear, feel, and see.
If I were a tree, I know how I'd be. My trunk strong and wide, my limbs side to side, I'd stand towering tall, high above all, My leaves growing big, and buds on each twig. If I were a tree, that's how I'd be.
The sister has camped in the forest many times before. The brother is nervous for his first overnight trip. As the illustrations in this multifaceted picture book show the siblings discovering the woods, the text celebrates the strength and…
I have always loved writing and drawing, so the perfect combination of these two passions is creating picture books. I began my career as a nonfiction book editor, writing texts for illustrated children’s books. I soon became a freelance writer and have never looked back. I love writing on many subjects for readers from kindergarten to high school—but my favorite is writing narrative non-fiction picture books. I get a kick out of finding just the right story to communicate tricky information so the reader has fun while they learn. This is the best way to discover amazing truths about our incredible world.
I love how this beautiful picture book teaches us to value trees as precious life forms that watch over and outlive us. I am fascinated by how the simple life story of a particular oak tree, from acorn to majestic ancient landmark, tells us so much about the passage of time and the changes our planet has seen over the centuries regarding farming, industrialization, and environmental damage.
I’m simply blown away by the wonderful rhyming text and sensitive, detailed illustrations, which work together to present the young reader with a relatable timeline from the distant past stretching far ahead into a hopefully more positive future.
'This beautifully drawn book is a delightful launchpad for home learning' - Sunday Times
Told in gentle rhyming verse, this beautiful non-fiction picture book follows the story of an oak tree on a hilltop as it witnesses life changing around it over the course of hundreds of years. From the time when hunters chased deer through the woodland, to when trees were cleared for farmland, to the smog and factories emerging during the industrial revolution. One majestic oak has seen it all, and now we can too.
Accompanying pages at the end of the book include a timeline of events…