Authors such as Melissa Harrison, Matt Sewell and the Swedish illustrator Maja Safstrom are some of the names in this choice of five books published this month. This is a list full of stories, plants, drawings and birds.
RAIN: FOUR WALKS IN ENGLISH WEATHER
Faber & Faber
Date of Publication: 3rd March
Price: £ 14,99
It is always like that. Rain changes a landscape. Farmlands, natural hedge and hills look different whenever it rains. There are particular sounds and smells. Wildlife behaves in different ways, it adapts. And over the years, the strength of water shapes the rocks, deepens the riverbeds and moves soils from one place to another. All these changes are described in this book by the naturalist eyes of the writer Melissa Harrison, one of the leading names of the new generation of British nature writing. Rain is published by Faber in association with the National Trust. It is dedicated to a topic considered “a British national obsession”. Rain is a need, a nuisance or part of that country personality?
PETITE FLORE DE FRANCE
By several authors
Belin Litterature and Revues
Date of publication: 11th March
Price: 39 €
This book is a concise and practical guide to help identify the most common species and it is also a small handbook on plants. The authors wanted to present only the most common species, that is, those that anyone can find in the fields, hills and mountains of France. As a whole, there are 100 families, 500 genera and 1000 species, representing one-fifth of the species registered in the French flora. This book associates identification keys, a coloured illustration by the French botanist Gaston Bonnier (1853 – 1922) for each one of the species, ecology of plants and a map of their distribution.
THE ILLUSTRATED COMPENDIUM OF AMAZING ANIMAL FACTS
Ten Speed Press
Date of publication: 29th March
Price: 11,24 $
The Swedish Maja Safstrom is an illustrator working from Stockholm. In these 120 pages, the author uses drawings and words to describe unexpected and fantastic facts about numerous species of animals: three hearts octopuses, the fact that ostriches are unable to walk backwards, and even bees that never sleep. Among the numerous curiosities are the starfish for not having brain or otters sleeping hand in hand to avoid being separated from one another. There are still more real and fascinating facts about seahorses, tapirs, grasshoppers and many other species.
ENDEAVOURING BANKS: EXPLORING THE COLLECTIONS FROM THE ENDEAVOUR VOYAGE 1768-1771
By: Sir David Attenborough, John Gascoigne, Jeremy Coote, Anna Agnarsdottir, Andrew Cook, Neil Chambers
Paul Holberton Publishing
Date of publication: 28th March
Price: £ 40
This is the story of the voyage of Endeavour over the Pacific, where captain James Cook (1728-1779), the British naturalist Joseph Banks (1743-1820) and a team of collectors and illustrators participated. Through it we can get to know the main figures who followed aboard Endeavour, see models and maps of the ship, scientific instruments used and also drawings, paintings and sketches of landscapes and native peoples and the various species of plants, birds, fish and other animals they found. In fact, many of the objects in the book have never been published. The book comes as anticipation of the 250th anniversary of that famous expedition that will be celebrated in 2018.
PENGUINS AND OTHER SEA BIRDS
Por Matt Sewell
Ebury Press
Date of publication: 24th March
Price: £ 9,99
He has already been called the Banksy of the bird world. Matt Sewell, illustrator and street-artist reveals he is obsessed with birds since he remembers. He spent hours, in his childhood, immersed in books, postcards and bird illustrations, fascinated by their colours. In March comes his latest book dedicated to penguins, one of the most beloved groups of birds in the world. After Our Garden Birds (2012), Our Songbirds (2013), Owls (2014) and Our Woodland Birds (2014), now Sewell illustrates 50 species of penguins and other birds of the Arctic. His watercolours are accompanied by small well-humoured descriptions revealing each animal’s personality.