Here are 30 books that The Book of Wilding fans have personally recommended if you like
The Book of Wilding.
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Michelle Lute is a conservation scientist and advocate with fifteen years’ experience in biodiversity conservation on public and private lands around the globe. She dedicates her professional life to promoting human-wildlife coexistence through effective public engagement, equitable participatory processes, and evidence-based decision-making. Michelle is the National Carnivore Conservation Manager for Project Coyote whose mission is to promote compassionate conservation and coexistence between people and wildlife through education, science and advocacy.
Rick Bass is an absolute American treasure and it’s difficult to choose between this book about Mexican gray wolf recovery or his equally enthralling book The Ninemile Wolves. The New Wolves covers a sometimes overlooked part of the story of wolf recovery in the US. More often than not, people think about Yellowstone and the return of gray wolves to Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho when they think about reintroduction efforts. The saga of Lobos in the Southwest is a poignant and important one to remember and Rick Bass’ skilled prose will stay with you too.
The award-winning writer documents changing wildlife patternsThis is the hopeful story of the resurgence of a long-hunted animal that nearly disappeared from the planet. The Mexican wolves were reintroduced to the Blue Mountains a few years ago, and Bass' celebration of their revival is writing at its best. Bass' newest release, The Lives of Rocks, is creating new readers for this classic from 2001."This is a ballad of a book, a hymn to the gloriously defiant power of survival."--Publishers Weekly"Enthralling and brilliant." - Jim HarrisonRick Bass lives in Yaak Valley, Montana.
I write nonfiction books for children and teens that focus on current environmental stories. But environmental headlines are usually gloomy and filled with foreboding, so, I prefer to focus on stories that involve individuals identifying an environmental problem and working to develop a solution – hence this list of happy conservation stories. The stories in this list – and many others – are the antidote to the headlines. They are the hope. They show human ingenuity at its most creative, most flexible, and most caring. Happy conservation stories empower kids, teens, and adults to care about the role they play in nature and unite them in action.
Rewilding is a book for older readers (ages 8+) organized in a browseable format.
The authors give a brief two-page overview of several conservation success stories. You’ll find some overlap between Rewilding’s stories and books I’ve written, like freeing the Elwha River (A River’s Gifts) and re-introducing black-footed ferrets into the wild (Zoo Scientists to the Rescue), but you’ll also find new stories about rattlesnakes, snot otters, Arabian oryx, tigers, meat-eating plants, and more.
⭐ Selected as one of the Best Nature Books of 2022 by Kirkus Reviews ⭐ ⭐ Selected as one of the Best Informational Books of 2022 for Older Readers by Chicago Public Library ⭐
"A book worth returning to multiple times. A fascinating primer on the intricacies of ecosystems." -- Kirkus, starred review
Discover inspiring stories of wildlife brought back from the brink of extinction – a perfect gift for kids who care about the environment!
Rewilding means returning animals or plants to places where they used to live. In this book, acclaimed conservation biologist and science communicator David A.…
We were fascinated with animals and the natural world from an early age. As documentary filmmakers, our intent was to capture the social lives of wolves on film. We hoped to dispel long-perpetuated myths by showing a side of these animals that was too often overlooked. What began as a two-year film project turned into six years of close observation and interaction with a pack of wolves. The things we learned and experienced exceeded our wildest expectations and changed our lives forever. We were captivated by these incredible and inspiring animals and have continued to advocate for wolves for over 30 years.
Reflecting on the first decade with wolves back in Yellowstone National Park, this book highlights milestones in the reintroduction effort, takes you out in the field with a wildlife biologist, and shares compelling stories of individual Yellowstone wolves and their packs. With more than 25 years spent overseeing wolves and elk in the park, Doug Smith is a unique authority on wolves and wolf behavior. Around the time our wolf project was coming to an end in the mid-’90s, those first wolves were released into central Idaho and Yellowstone. When we read this book some ten years later, we heard the echoes of our own experience in the behavior and characteristics of the wolves in Yellowstone.
Written by an award-winning writer and the leader of the Yellowstone Wolf Project, this definitive book recounts the years since the wolves' return to Yellowstone.
I’m a lover of wildlife and have written several nonfiction picture books on the topic, includingWinged Wonders: Solving the Monarch Migration Mystery, Cougar Crossing: How Hollywood’s Celebrity Cougar Built a Bridge for City Wildlife, and Ocean Soup: a Recipe for You, Me, and A Cleaner Sea. I’m also a humane educator, which inspires the focus of all my nonfiction picture books on “solutionaries” helping people, animals, and the planet. At heart, my books—which have won Golden Kite Nonfiction and Eureka! Nonfiction Honors and more—aim to inspire compassion, inclusivity, and positive action.
This book is a classic and a favorite of mine; I loved reading it to kids as a humane educator and seeing their eyes widen. I still marvel at how this book illustrates so simply and powerfully what happened to the entire ecosystem of Yellowstone National Park when wolves were reintroduced after being eliminated by humans years earlier. It’s a hugely impactful story about how any one species in an ecosystem affects all the others—and kids love it!
Two renowned children’s book creators teamed up to make this stirring picture book that tells the story of how, over a century, wolves were persecuted in the United States and nearly became extinct. Gradually reintroduced, they are thriving again in the West, much to the benefit of the ecosystem. This book will teach a new generation to appreciate the grace, dignity, and value of wolves as it promotes awareness of the environment’s delicate balance. Paired with gorgeous paintings by landscape artist Wendell Minor, Jean Craighead George’s engaging text will inspire people of all ages to care about the protection of…
I am a rabbi, educator and author. I have had the privilege of writing many books over the course of my rabbinate. Over the past five years, I have turned the attention of my writing to children’s books. And I am especially attuned to those books that take complicated Jewish ideas and tell them in words and pictures that young children can understand. I try to do this in my own writing, as well.
I remember reading an article in The New York Times about the discovery by archeologists of an ancient seed. I thought to myself, “This would make a great picture book for kids.”
Then I saw The Miracle Seed in print. Lemelman has done a great job telling the story—and also using it as a vehicle to demonstrate the challenges of the Jewish people through a particular period of history—and its rebirth.
The thrilling true story of an ancient plant, wonderfully reborn in the modern era through the hard work of two female scientists.
Thousands of years ago, in a time of rebellion, the Jewish people fought against their Roman rulers. The brutal Emperor Titus ordered the destruction of everything precious to the Jews: towns, villages, even their beloved Judean date palm trees. Centuries passed. The Jewish people were scattered, and the Judean date palm faded into extinction. Then, in 1963, a team of archaeologists uncovered two-thousand-year-old date palm seeds at the ruined fortress of Masada. For another forty years the seeds…
When I was on holiday in Borneo with my daughter, we met an inspirational conservationist who was basically single-handedly saving sun bears from extinction. I asked what I could do to help. “Do what you do best,” he said. Those five powerful words shaped my last decade, most recently prompting the growing series of Wildlife Wong nonfiction children’s books based on his true adventures with rainforest creatures. I feel strongly about the importance of connecting kids to nature. Not only is it good for their physical and mental health, but my generation hasn’t done a particularly good job of environmental stewardship, and we need all the help we can get.
Narratives are such a powerful tool when it comes to connecting kids to nature and, let’s face it, that connection has been lost with increased reliance on technology. My doctorate focused on how nonfiction narratives can engage non-scientists in conservation. Two things I learnt were that we won’t save something unless we love it, and hopeful stories have more power than disasters. You will fall in love with the expansive, wild landscape of Yellowstone Park with the beautifully crafted descriptions in Fourteen Wolves. The important underlying story of regeneration also instills hope that we can make a difference, combating inertia. In my opinion, this beautifully illustrated nature biography is destined to become a classic, passed down through generations.
'A magical true story with stunningly beautiful illustrations. It is a book to treasure forever' David Walliams, comedian and children's author ____________________ In fairy tales, the wolf's cry makes people shudder. They've been hunted, captured. But the wolf carries a wild magic - a magic that once restored a barren land.
When wolves disappeared from Yellowstone Park in the 1930s, the ecosystem started to collapse. Enormous herds of elk swarmed the plains, bears starved, rabbit families shrunk and birds flew away to new homes. Plants vanished, trees withered and rivers meandered.
Growing up, I built snow forts, climbed the white birch tree in my front yard, and talked to a rabbit named Bobby who lived in the bushes. I rode my bike on adventures, getting lost and exploring woods, ditches, and surrounding landscapes. In a household where I often felt unsafe, time outdoors was a refuge. Working in a career as a university professor of social work for the past 20 years, I have used mindful outdoor experiences, as well as yoga and meditation, as a source of healing. And I have loved sharing these practices with my students. Today, I am documenting my rewilding adventures in my van which has been a joyful way to honor my inner child.
I read this book as a young person in college, but it wasn’t until I re-read it about 10 years ago that I was able to experience the depths of its power.
This classic collection of 19th-century poems was a beacon at the time and holds true today for modern people who long to re-claim our interconnectedness with the natural world and embrace ourselves in all of our complexity. It’s a book I keep in my campervan to read on camping trips and one that I go to when I need inspiration with my own writing.
As Malcolm Cowley says in his introduction, the first edition of Leaves of Grass 'might be called the buried masterpiece of American writing', for it exhibits 'Whitman at his best, Whitman at his freshest in vision and boldest in language, Whitman transformed by a new experience.' Mr Cowley has taken the first edition from its narrow circulation among scholars, faithfully edited it, added his own introduction and Whitman's original introduction (which never appeared in any other edition during Whitman's life), and returned it to the common readership to whom the great poet really speaks.
I cannot remember a time when I wasn’t captured by nature. Growing up in coastal Devon, UK, I loved immersing myself, sometimes literally, in the landscapes and nature of my surroundings. It was inevitable I would become a biologist, and I think also inevitable that I would be drawn to the field of ecology, the study of the relationships that exist within nature. I have expanded my horizons over the past decade or so, developing a deep love for the landscapes and nature of southern Africa, but the rockpools and lanes of Devon are never far away.
I am a biologist and I have a passion, a deep love indeed, of the natural world. I always have. It boosts me and nurtures me–body, mind and spirit. But at the moment, with everything that is happening to the world, I think it is easy to lose hope.
Feral is everything you would expect from Monbiot–elegant prose and well thought out ideas building on solid knowledge. But it is more than that. It is a book that brings hope and makes me feel that, even if Monbiot’s vision isn’t the way, there most certainly is a way through the mess we are creating.
Positivity, action, hope–these are things we need more of right now.
To be an environmentalist early in the twenty-first century is always to be defending, arguing, acknowledging the hurdles we face in our efforts to protect wild places and fight climate change. But let’s be honest: hedging has never inspired anyone.
So what if we stopped hedging? What if we grounded our efforts to solve environmental problems in hope instead, and let nature make our case for us? That’s what George Monbiot does in Feral, a lyrical, unabashedly romantic vision of how, by inviting nature back into our lives, we can simultaneously cure our “ecological boredom” and begin repairing centuries of…
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 book was given to me by an Anglican priest in Valparaiso, and it’s probably been the single biggest influence on my thought of anything I have ever read. It is a series of letters from Mayne to his grandchildren, explaining his view of the world. It’s a bit quieter than Annie Dillard’s exuberant sense of enchantment, but no less filled with wonder. It’s packed full of quotations from other authors, gleaned from a lifetime’s reading. The title is a quote from GK Chesterton, "At the back of our brains, there is a forgotten blaze or burst of astonishment at our own existence. The object of the artistic and spiritual life is to dig for this sunrise of wonder."
Parson's Porch Books is excited to announce the publication of the new American edition of Michael Mayne's This Sunrise of Wonder. This Anglican classic will captivate readers with its warm humanity and endearing and pulsating spirituality. Michael Mayne, one of the greatest Anglican priest-writers, was Head of Religious Programmes, BBC Radio; Vicar of Great St. Mary's (the University Church), Cambridge; and Dean of Westminster Abbey. His last book, The Enduring Melody, was published a few days before his death in October 2006. He was also the author of A Year Lost and Found, Learning to Dance, and Pray, Love, Remember.
I’m an investigative journalist and social historian who’s obsessed with ‘invisible’ women of the 19th and early 20th century, bringing their stories to life in highly readable narrative non-fiction. I love the detective work involved in resurrecting ordinary women’s lives: shop girls, milliners, campaigning housewives, servants. . . The stories I’ve uncovered are gripping, often shocking and frequently poignant – but also celebrate women’s determination, solidarity and capacity for reinvention. Each of my two books took me on a long research journey deep into the archives: The Housekeeper’s Tale – the Women Who Really Ran the English Country House, and Etta Lemon – The Woman Who Saved the Birds.
Here’s how an intense, almost obsessive focus on wildlife can bring solace from chaos and alienation. Young bird-lover Hannah Bourne-Taylor moves to Ghana as a ‘trailing spouse,’ and it’s the fauna that keeps her going as she struggles to rebuild her identity. Two stray dogs leap into her life; a pangolin needs saving from someone’s dinner table. But it’s the act of saving a swift and a mannikin finch, nurturing and releasing the birds back into the wild, that provides the key to this closely observed, touching story. At first, the finch doesn’t want to re-wild – and Hannah realizes with a shock that she’s humanized it. Explores interesting dilemmas about intervening on nature’s behalf, and whether one act of compassion can really make a difference. A book full of hope.
Read the powerful account of one woman's fight to reshape her identity through connection with nature when all normality has fallen away.
When lifelong bird-lover Hannah Bourne-Taylor moved with her husband to Ghana seven years ago she couldn't have anticipated how her life would be forever changed by her unexpected encounters with nature and the subsequent bonds she formed.
Plucked from the comfort and predictability of her life before, Hannah struggled to establish herself in her new environment, striving to belong in the rural grasslands far away from home.
In this challenging situation, she was forced to turn inwards and…
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