25 PICTURE BOOKS TO LOOK FORWARD TO IN 2025

 At this time of year there are a few 'looking forward to' book lists doing the rounds. But here are some very exciting picture book-shaped offerings that caught my eye! 

JANUARY

1. THE REALLY BEAUTIFUL THING (Frances Tosdevin, Ali Pye)

Squirrel is prepared to sell everything he has for The Really Beautiful Thing, but at what cost? A cautionary tale with a heartwarming ending about the force of greed and the power of friendship and family. The perfect story to share with little ones about consumerism, greed and obsession, that teaches us we can't always have everything we want . . . and that our loved ones will always be there to help us when we lose our way.

Squirrel doesn’t know what The Really Beautiful Thing is, or even what it does, but it’s AMAZING, and he wants it…even if it costs him EVERYTHING.

2. THE GREAT UNICORN RESCUE: A magical adventure about facing your fears (Diane Ewen)

The Great Unicorn Rescue is an enchanting, unicorn-filled tale about friendship and fighting your fears, from the award-winning, bestselling Diane Ewen.

Louella lives on the edge of a forest. But this isn't just any forest – this forest has unicorns in it! Louella's unicorn is called Norrie, and they love collecting shells together from the stream and spending all day together. Norrie’s special power is being able to cast a bright beam of light – so although Louella’s biggest fear is the dark, she never has to worry with Norrie around!

Until, one day, when Louella’s school has a class trip into the forest and Norrie doesn’t appear. Where could Norrie have got to? Can Louella overcome her biggest fear to help her friend out?

An enchanting story about friendship and how facing your fear with friends might just make that fear disappear altogether!

The authorial debut from Diane Ewen, illustrator of Coming to England and winner of the Jericho Prize and the Queen’s Knickers award.

 

FEBRUARY

3. THE FULL STOP THAT GOT AWAY (Laura Baker, Nathan Reed) 

Frank is a full stop who LOVES making up stories. But sometimes the stories won’t stop, even when Frank says, “The End.” And when a dragon takes over, Frank has had enough… But without a full stop, how will the story ever finish?

A hilariously non-stop story about learning to let your imagination flow, and the perfect first introduction to punctuation.

4. OH NO, FLO! (Catherine Cawthorne, Mike Byrne)

Farmer loves looking after her animals. Farmer does all the jobs that need to be done. And she does them just right. But most of all, Farmer LOVES her trusty sheepdog, Flo. So when Farmer gets sick, Flo leaps in to SAVE THE DAY! The only question is, what does Farmer actually DO all day? With the help of her farmyard friends, Flo sets to work: brushing the carrots, collecting the geese, sowing the sheep. . . HOLD ON! OH NO - Flo is in a muddle!

Will Flo be able to get all the jobs done in time? Or will this farmyard fiasco go from bad to worse?

This laugh-out-loud animal adventure will have all readers shouting 'OH NO, FLO!' as Flo's antics unfold, making it the perfect book for storytime. Ideal for fans of Duck in the Truck, You Can't Take an Elephant on the Bus and Poo in the Zoo.

5. DO NOT EAT THE EGG (Fiona Barker, Siân Roberts) 

The perfect picture-book treat for every small child (and adult) who has tried to resist temptation... and failed!

When Small Rabbit discovers a gorgeously wrapped chocolate egg in the cupboard he can't WAIT to eat it. But the label says Do NOT eat the egg! Can Small Rabbit do the right thing... or will it turn into a gloriously gooey chocolate disaster?

Chocolatey perfection for fans of Chris Haughton and Jon Klassen

 

6. THE SPACE BETWEEN (Clare Helen Welsh, Fiona Lumbers)

Granny has a secret: big changes aren't so scary when we take comfort in the time it takes to embrace them. 

When her granddaughter is missing her old home, Granny teaches her a secret. The flower buds aren’t quite open, but they will be soon: they’re in the space between, and that time is a gift to treasure. Just like the flowers will soon bloom, in time she will feel at home. But Granny’s in the space between too... and she might need a little help to come out on the other side.

MARCH

7. HENRY THE ARTISTIC DOG (Justin Worsley)

Henry doesn't think anyone appreciates his unusual art, but one night everything changes...

Henry is an artist, a master sculptor and . . . a dog. Unfortunately, his self-made pieces, in all their sculptural forms, are often tossed in the bin without even being noticed! But Henry never gives up on his art until, one day, an unexpected somebody finally falls in love with his work and at last Henry has his moment to shine.

8. I’M GONNA EAT A MONSTER! (Kael Tudor, Scott Wilson)

Join Little Rabbit and Grey Wolf on their quest to EAT a monster in this hilarious new picture book story.

One morning, deep in the forest, Grey Wolf spots a delicious-looking rabbit and thinks to himself: Time for breakfast! But Little Rabbit isn't scared. In fact, she has plans of her own – plans to find and EAT a monster.Which is ridiculous, of course, because monsters AREN'T REAL.

Or are they?

Written by picture-book rising star Kael Tudor and brought to life by debut illustrator Scott Wilson, this read-aloud adventure is full of clever humour and LOTS of unexpected twists and turns.

9. THE FLOWER THIEF (A Squirrel & Bird Book) (Alice Hemming, Nicola Slater)

Perfect for fans of Fletcher and the Springtime Blossoms, the spring-themed companion to the New York Times bestseller The Leaf Thief!

"Hello brand new day.

Hello sunshine!

Hello lovely leaves.

Nice to see you back."

Spring is here and today a flower has sprung to life. But when Squirrel becomes too protective of it, Bird shows Squirrel the right way to let flowers blossom and grow.

10. BADGER BOOKS (Paddy Donnelly)

From the world of Fox & Son Tailers…

‘Badger Books’ is a bookshop, run by a badger. On its shelves, you can find books about every animal. From bears to elephants, tigers to dinosaurs and pandas to narwhals. But there’s one book they don’t have … and it’s one that Rory the Fox really, really wants.

11. BY THE BEAVER POOL (Catherine Ward, Phoebe Roze)

Each day, as the sun peeked out from behind the clouds, I unpacked more of my favourite things.

Each evening, as the sky grew sleepy, we went to watch the beavers. The dam grew and grew… 

Beck learns to love living at Grandma’s farm with the help of a pair of beavers that have moved to the stream nearby.

As Beck settles in at Grandma’s farm in Scotland, they watch the beavers busily gathering sticks to build a dam, which creates a pool and wetland habitat where lots of other wildlife can live too. As the seasons pass, Beck and the beavers find happiness in their new homes. By the Beaver Pool is a gentle tale of rewilding, connecting with nature and feeling at home, which cleverly weaves in facts about these incredible creatures.  

A moving story of new beginnings that will also teach children about the brilliance of beavers.

APRIL

12. BASIL DREAMS BIG ( Lu Fraser, Sarah Warburton)

An adorable story about self-belief from the creators of Mavis the Bravest and One Camel Called Doug.

“How do I steer? And how do I stop?

What if I lose all my UPNESS and … drop?!”

Basil the bat doesn’t believe he can fly. No matter how hard he tries, he just can’t do it. But when a thundering storm threatens the safety of his beloved friend, Moth, will Basil find his wings and believe in the bat he CAN be?

13. THESE ARE MY ROCKS: A Story About Collecting (Bethan Woollvin)

Join the narrator, as they proudly introduce the reader to their prized collection, featuring BIG things to small things … and spiky things to wobbly things!

Each page is bursting with humour – and they are interactive too – with children encouraged to interact with the book, with invitations to point, make noises, clap their hands and think about what they could collect..

Interactive books engage young children and capture their natural curiosity and These Are My Rocks encourages the development of important early-learning skills such as listening, choosing, matching, counting and moving by playing on the theme of interaction. 

These Are My Rocks is stylish, humorous, inclusive and utterly engaging – and a celebration of children's love of collecting. 

14. HOW NOT TO SHARE A PIZZA (Tracy Curran, Lauren Beard)

 

MAY 

15. ALL THE WONDERFUL WAYS TO MOVE (Laura Baker, Sandra de la Prada) 

Jump up off your bottom and get in the groove.

Wiggle your body, let’s see how you MOVE!

Stomp, hop and clap along to the bouncy rhyme in this playful celebration of moving your body. A follow-up to All the Wonderful Ways to Read.

JUNE

16. THE ROCK FAMILY BAND (Robert Tregoning, Laura Brenlla)

Meet The Rocks! The family’s youngest member, flute-playing Sam, is different from the rest of his glam-rock family and sometimes they clash. Can the Rocks find a way to bring harmony into their music and into their home? Find out in this picture book about embracing each other for being who we are, whatever the tune that we sing and no matter how glam-rock we roll!

17. LLAMA LIBRARY (Holly Ryan, Ella Bailey) 

This isn’t a library for book-borrowers – in this library you borrow a llama!

The Llama Library has any subject you can imagine – cookery, history, art, music, science even romance! All you need to do is go to the section and choose your llama, give the librarian your card to stamp and you can take it home. And that’s where things might get a little… messy! But don’t worry – just return your llama to the library and borrow another.

Holly Ryan’s hilarious story of a library from another dimension is bright to life by the incredible Ella Bailey. The magic of borrowing from your local library has never been this funny!

18. PUT YOUR SHOES ON (Polly Dunbar)

Every morning, all across the globe, children are being asked to put their shoes on. And, every morning, across the globe... no children are putting shoes on their feet, including Josh.

Mummy is desperate for Josh to put his shoes on – they have Aunty Nelly's party to go to! His cousins Tobias and Clementine will be there! (With their best shoes on.) While she asks nicely, cajoles, and eventually shouts (a bit), what she can't see is that Josh is actually VERY BUSY: he is completely lost in his own imaginative landscape inhabited by wild and wonderful creatures, made from real children's drawings by Polly Dunbar's son. 

In his own head, Josh is indeed putting shoes on ... just not on his own feet. Cleverly fusing together two unique art styles, Polly connects us to the inner life of a child and all the little worries and distractions they wrestle with as soon as they know they have to leave home. In the end, she asks for a little more patience and love ... for both parent and child.

 

JULY

19. IS THAT YOUR MAMA (Patrice Lawrence, Diane Ewen)

A beautiful, moving celebration of what it truly means to be family, from the brilliant new picture book duo Patrice Lawrence and Diane Ewen.

Every family is different. Every family is special.

Josie loves her family. Her mum, dad, brothers and sister - they're all the best and they all look different.

But people always seem to ask Josie "Is that YOUR mama?", and soon she starts to wonder if her family are actually supposed to look the same.

When Josie shares her worries with her family, they find a way to help her see what truly matters.

20. THE DANGEROUS PET LOVER’S GUIDE TO DRAGONS (Lindsay Hirst, Alice McKinley)

Dragons are well known for being sulky and difficult. However, by following these simple but important guidelines, you might just be able to create a loveable and (almost) friendly pets. 

The Dangerous Pet Lover’s Guide to Dragons is the essential dragon-care manual you didn’t know you needed. Full of useful tips, tricks and advice on everything from feeding and housing your new dragon to grooming and washing it (top tip: DON’T EVEN TRY!), this handy guidebook will equip you with everything you need to bond with your new pet!

21. A MILLION CHAMELEONS (Rachel Morrisroe, Aysha Awwad) 

A laugh-out-loud chameleon word-play explosion - perfect for reading aloud together!

The world is home to millions of colourful chameleons. What do you think they get up when no one is watching?

From cheeky flicking-pea-leons to cute-as-cute-can-be-leons and even always-needs-a-wee-leons, there's SO much more to these creatures than meets the eye!

AUGUST

22. THE BIG MONSTER BAKE (Fiona Barker, Eve O'Brien)

Come on down to MonsterStreet this howlingHallowe’en.

The houses look spooktacular, a truly splendid scene.

We’ve been busy cooking and we’ve made a monster bake.

I wonder, would our neighbours like a slice of tasty cake?

The Big Monster Bake is a picture book with a sweet and inclusive approach to Halloween. It stars a pair of little monsters hoping to share a homemade cake with their neighbours on Monster Street.

23. THE GREAT NUT HUNT (Karl Newson, Nia Havilliard)

Up and down, high and low.

Over and under and into I go . . . 

When I’m hunting for nuts!

Squirrel LOVES nuts. He loves them so much that he collects AS MANY AS HE CAN! There’s just one problem: with so many nuts hidden around the woods, Squirrel just can’t remember where they all are. Oh, nuts!

Full of energy and fun, this gorgeous picture book brings together Karl Newson and Nia Tudor for the very first time!

With a bouncy rhyming text and illustrations full of colour and detail, The Great Nut Hunt is perfect for autumn - and all year round!

SEPTEMBER

24. I DEFINITELY DON’T LIKE THE DARK (Fiona Barker, Christine Pym) 

A heartwarming picture book about two best friends who learn how accept each other's differences.

Hank and Hoog are best friends - they do EVERYTHING together.

Until one evening when Hank confesses that he's scared of the dark... Hoog can't understand - there's nothing to be scared of! But Hank can't stop thinking about the shadows, and what's making those night time noises? They may not agree on the dark, but there's something they both definitely like: each other.

And with a good friend, there will always be light in the darkness...

(Enjoy more of Hank and Hoog's adventures with the first book in the series I Definitely Don't Like Winter)

OCTOBER

25. I’M GOING TO EAT A POLAR BEAR (Karl Newson, Nicola Kinnear)

A little penguin is hungry but bored of eating fish and decides it wants to eat something different! An older penguin recalls hearing of a fluffy creature called a polar bear, so the little penguin sets off to find one. On arrival at the North Pole, the penguin can’t see a polar bear anywhere and eventually turns back home. Unbeknownst to hungry penguin, though, an equally hungry polar bear is following right behind...

What a lot of lovely stories to look forward to! 

Which ones did we miss? 

Feel free to tell us what other picture books there are up and coming in the comments. 

Happy reading! 

A Christmas story for you, by Pippa Goodhart

After thirteen years of being a regular contributor to this lovely Picture Book Den, I've decided that this will be my last regular post here. What should my last post be? It's landing at Christmas, so I give you a gift of a story about giving. It's a story intended for a picture book, but which has yet to find a publisher who wants it. I hope you enjoy it -

  

What Can I Give?

 

One morning my phone goes - Bleep-bleepety-bleep!

It’s Mole.

‘Hello, Moley, how are you?’ 

Mole just sighs and says nothing.

‘Shall I come and see you?’ I ask. 

‘Yes please, Rabbit,’ says Mole. 

‘I’ll bring you a present to cheer you up,’ I tell her. 

But I haven’t got a present. What can I give her?  

 

I think of Mole in her gloomy dark hole. 

I want to give Mole colours! 

 

So I stitch-stitch a quilt to wrap-hug Mole up in sky blue, leaf green, berry red.

‘I think she’ll like this!’

 

But, as I set off to Mole’s hole home, I see Badger, and Badger is shivery-quivery cold.

What shall I do? 

What would you do?

 

I give the quilt to poor cold Badger.

‘Thank you, kind Rabbit,’ says Badger.

I’m glad that Badger’s warm, but now what can I give sad Mole? 

Perhaps I can give her some fun.

 

So, I make a toy for Mole. 

I make a fine little boat to float in Mole’s bath; a boat for her to play with. 

I know that she’s waiting for me, so I must hurry to take it to her.

 

But, as I scurry along the path, I see Mouse. Poor little Mouse is gulp-sniff-sobbing.

‘Oh dear, Mouse, what’s the matter?’

‘I got left behind,’ sniffs Mouse. ‘And now I can’t catch up with my friends, and it’s getting late, and I don’t know what to do-oo-oo! Boo hoo!’

‘Oh.’ I look at the little boat I’d made for Mole. 

What shall I do? What would you do?

 

‘Would a boat that could float you down the river help?’ I ask.

‘Oh, yes please, kind Rabbit!’ says Mouse.

So, Mouse floats away in the boat to catch up with his friends. 

But now what can I give Mole?

I haven’t got time to go home and make anything new. All I can do is to collect pretty things as I go along the path. So, I make a bouquet of twigs and leaves and berries to bring beauty into Moley’s home. 

 

But just as I am about to knock on Mole’s door, I see Hare, bounding along the path. 

She sees my bouquet, and she says, ‘Oh, my goodness gracious me, is that big bouquet all for me? How did you know it was my birthday today? Hooray! Thank you so much, kind Rabbit!’

So, of course, I give Hare the bouquet.

 

And now I have nothing to give to my friend Mole, nothing at all. But I’d promised to give her a present! Shall I just creep away, and come back again another day? 

What would you do? 

Uh-oh, oh no, Mole has seen me!

 

‘Come in!’ calls Mole. 

So that’s what I do. 

I tell Mole about trying to bring her colours, making a quilt, and meeting a shivery Badger. I tell about trying to bring her fun, with the boat that was needed by lost little Mouse. I tell about the bouquet that made Hare birthday-happy. 

‘So, I’m sorry, dear Mole, but I have nothing to give you after all. Nothing. Nothing, at all.’

‘That’s not true!’ laughs Mole. ‘You have brought me a story full of lovely things. I love stories.’

That gives me an idea. ‘Shall we make the story into a book?’

 

So, together, Moley and I make the story into a book. 

‘The perfect present!’ smiles Mole. ‘Thank you, kind Rabbit.’  

And her smile is the perfect present for me. 

 

My hope was that this, as a book, could look as if its hand-written, and could perhaps include what look like scrapbook additions of scraps of quilt fabric and winter flowers etc, thus appearing to be the book they make at the end of the story.

 

Pippa Goodhart

Wishing you all a very happy Christmas!

PS My You Choose Christmas, beautifully illustrated by Nick Sharratt, is newly out in paperback:

A

 

 

How to Imagine a Picture Book World • By Natascha Biebow

The World's A Wonderful Place If You Can Only Visualize It!

When children are young, their actual world is relatively small and they are just beginning to grasp what the wider world looks like. Day-to-day revolves around home, routines, family, the neighbourhood, nursery and preschool, and everyday tasks and celebrations. Yet young children have vivid imaginations with almost unlimited scope. From just under a year, their pretend play takes off and they soon start to play with props and people around them as if they were real. 

 

         

Enriched pretend play helps young children develop empathy and social skills, learn new concepts, gain confidence and independence, understand how the world works, and improve motor skills.

 

When children see the possiblities in books, this can both validate their imaginative play and serve as a springboard for new ideas.

 

In picture books, writers and illustrators can do just about anything as long as the internal logic is sound.

 

Pairing seemingly random characters and objects together create such interesting, fun and compelling worlds.

 

A bucket portal into an ocean world? Yes!

 

From Billy's Bucket by Kes Gray and Garry Parsons

 

Or even a bucket that is full of dinosaurs – didn’t you know?

 

From Harry and the Bucketful of Dinosaurs Go to School by Ian Whybrow and Adrian Reynolds

Dragons that wear underpants. Of course!

 

 

From Dragons Love Underpants by Claire Friendman and Ben Cort

A Tiger who drinks all the water in the tap – certainly.

 

From The Tiger Who Came to Tea by Judith Kerr

A dragon who scarfs tacos?

 

 

From Dragons Love Tacos by Adam Rubin

A generous witch with room for everyone on her broom . . .

 

From Room on the Broom by Julia Donaldson and Axel Sheffler

 

A boy who can sail alone to the land of the monsters and be King . . .

From Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak

 

A seed who is bad (but doesn't mean to be)?

 

From The Bad Seed by Jory John and Pete Oswold

Cows that type and Ducks that negotiate. . .

 

From Click, Clack, Moo, Cows That Type by Doreen Cronin and Betsy Lewin

 

Crayons that rebel . . .

 

From The Day the Crayons Quit by Drew Daywalt

 

A pigeon who wants to drive a bus . . .?

 

From Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus! by Mo Willems

 

A snowdog that can fly! 

From the Snowman and the Snowdog based on the characters created by Raymond Briggs

EVERYTHING is possible!

 

Imaginative play is empowering and fun. And it’s a great excuse to just PLAY.

 

What book world will you create? Where will you go and who will be there?

 

_________________________________________________________________

 

  Natascha Biebow, MBE, Author, Editor and Mentor

 

  Want to level up your picture books? I am launching a new  online picture book course!

  Natascha is the author of the award-winning The Crayon Man: The True Story of the Invention of Crayola Crayons, illustrated by Steven Salerno, winner of the Irma Black Award for Excellence in Children's Books, and selected as a best STEM Book 2020. Editor of numerous prize-winning books, she runs Blue Elephant Storyshaping, an editing, coaching and mentoring service aimed at empowering writers and illustrators to fine-tune their work pre-submission, and is the Editorial Director for Five Quills. Find out about her picture book webinar courses! She is Co-Regional Advisor (Co-Chair) of SCBWI British Isles and was awarded an MBE for her services to children's book writers and illustrators. Find her at www.nataschabiebow.com

 

Non-fiction that makes you feel (with Mini Grey)

Non-fiction books are sometimes seen as factual, and not emotional. But I think this is far from the truth, and in this post I’m going to have a look at a few non-fiction books, and consider how they make us feel. 

 

The Klaus Flugge Prize is awarded to debut picture book illustrators. Winning an award like this is exactly the spotlight you need when you’re just starting in picture books. A non-fiction book had never won before, but this year it did, with Kate Winter’s The Fossil Hunter. It’s the story of Mary Anning. And it shows that a non-fiction book can have powerful visual story-telling.

I was lucky enough to have a chat with Kate at an online event with the brilliant Just Imagine.  She showed us the sketches of Mary that had guided her making of the story. Mary often is holding a light, and I think Mary looking hard and shining a light into the past might be an important theme of the book.

A Mary Anning sketch by Kate Winter

Another sketch by Kate

 To me, the illustrations in The Fossil Hunter are about capturing the light and the moment and the feel – of what Mary Anning is experiencing. 

 There’s a looseness in the style of the pictures – they’re not too detailed, not pinned down, gestural, slightly unresolved – so that your imagination has space to fill in. 

Work-in-progress stages by Kate of an image from The Fossil Hunter

 If these pictures were more photographic, more realistic – we wouldn’t have that space to project onto them. The figure of Mary is often the only woman – alone, resolute, but also looking into a vivid vanished world. 

Scattered through The Fossil Hunter are gatefold pages. The gatefold is an opening to a whole new world hidden beneath. Under the gatefold there’s a hidden layer, waiting to be discovered.

  Sometimes the gatefold is a door into past worlds that are an explosion of colour, with Mary exploring. 

 The gatefold is a way to physically dip into the past, into a layer of parallel worlds, as Mary imagines the past, millions of years ago.

It’s also a way to open a book of wonder, a cabinet of treasures.  

Sometimes fossils in shale can be like treasures hidden within the leaves of a black book, waiting for you to be the first creature to see them since they were buried in the mud, millions of years ago. 

Here is Mary gazing into the unknown, again with her light to see further, to uncover secrets. The pictures are enabling us to feel Mary’s wonder.

 

In Rob and Tom Sears’s book The Biggest Footprint, all of humanity gets smooshed into one giant human, 3 km high. 

They said about making it: “We started out with a weird thought experiment: what if, instead of 8 billion humans, there was just one, colossal mega human, smooshed together from all of our mass? How big would we be? What would we be like, and what sort of mischief would we get up to?”

This book is about getting an idea of the scale of our impact on the planet. Numbers in the millions are really hard for us humans to get our heads round, but this book tries to present this visually, comparing numbers and sizes, always with something shown for scale, so we can start to build the perspective to see what we’re up to as a species. 

At the start there’s a huge crowd of 8 billion people – what are they queuing for? It turns out, it’s to go in the smooshing machine. 

And what comes out of the smooshing is a huge blue bemused mega-human.  

The mega-human isn’t deliberately bad, but it’s clumsy and not really aware of how powerful it is. 

For scale, all the wild tigers there are in the world (less than 4000) get smooshed into a 44 metre tiger. It bounds out of the smooshing machine, a stripey flash, looking pretty big perched on the Taj Mahal…

 

 ...but then it fits easily on the thumbnail of the megahuman.

 

We get to compare the 3 km height of the megahuman with the smooshed mega giraffe (size: up to the ankle) The unbelievable scale of what we’ve done to our planet in the last 100 years is shown by the changing sizes of the mega-animals. 

  Finally our mega-human  meets all-the-humans-who-have-ever-lived, and then a mega-creature who is All-Life-On-Earth, both of them increasingly enormous – but not as big as the monstrous ball that is Everything-On-Earth-Made-By-Humans. And now I’m feeling dizzy with the perspective – the human-made world is now more massive than the living one. 

In this picture the small figure talking is All-The-Humans-Who-Have-Ever-Lived, the Mega-human is the teeny blue blob to the left of them.

  The scale of our impact is incredible. The people of Earth are producing stuff (concrete, metal, tarmac etc) every week that is equal to their collective bodyweight. 

 

 In these final spreads all the people of Earth have been de-smooshed – (this could have been a good gatefold!) How it makes us feel is an important factor – we’ve been included in the smooshing process, we’ve been taken on a tour of the scale of life on Earth and the scale of human impacts, we’ve been shown how we could turn ourselves around, and we’ve been released from being smooshed to be individuals who feel part of something with immense power – and what if the whole of humanity got a Nobel Prize for turning the fate of the Earth around? Maybe we feel a bit of hope.

Tom and Rob Sears said: 

“It is easy to feel hopeless. We tend to reason that the individual changes we can make are tiny compared to the scale of the crisis. Well, that may be true! But the lesson of the mega human is that when we act together we do have immense power, power to do both harm and good.

As 21st century individualists, it can be hard for us to accept the idea that being a small part of something powerful ‘counts’ as real power. We’re fixated on how much individual control we can exert and we ask ourselves, “Why make a change when the world may crash and burn anyway? Or why vote when my one puny ballot paper almost certainly won’t change the result?”

This isn’t the way to think. The truth is you are part of something powerful whether you like it or not – whether you act or not. The question is which larger force you are going to be a part of.”

My final non-fiction book with heart is The Observologist, by Giselle Clarkson –it’s ‘a Handbook for Mounting Very Small Scientific Expeditions’. This book finds the wonders in the everyday.  The closer you look, the more you see. Nothing is boring. Every creature is busy living & experiencing its own life, with its own hopes and fears, and it feels like something to be it.

 

You can find tiny treasure. There’s usefulness in being bored. This book is funny but also inspires curiosity and a fierce love of nature, and respect for small creatures like the humble woodlouse. And that when you are observing and exploring, you are being a scientist. Clarkson doesn’t shy away from giving you the proper science words for stuff – you are being respected as a scientist who can deal with the real words. 

 

Being a matchbox fan, I particularly liked this spread.

'Just a fantastic creature'

'Golden brown like a marmalade cat'

'

 

 

Keats, in his poem Lamias, complained that “Philosophy (AKA science, especially Newton) will clip an Angel’s wings,
Conquer all mysteries by rule and line,
Empty the haunted air, and gnomed mine –
Unweave a rainbow..” 

Books like The Observologist show how wrong that is – that every tiny thing gets more interesting the closer you look, that the more you know about the world, the more extraordinary and strange and wonderful the universe and life on Earth become, and everything is interesting.

When I made this Donald Rumfeldt balloon diagram of everything,  I discovered that as your balloon of KNOWN KNOWNS gets bigger, its skin – the membrane that is KNOWN UNKNOWNS gets bigger too – so the more you know, the more you realise there is to know – and this is a good and exciting thing.

Mary Anning had no idea of Darwin’s big idea, she lived too early. In her time, creation was all made by God, and animals were all separate creations – humans most separate of all.

Darwin’s great idea, sketched in a notebook – was that everything is related, it is all linked together in a tree of life: we are woven together and related to everything and everyone else who has ever lived on earth, from bacteria to sponges to sharks to tigers to humans. The fact that we’re alive on this improbable, beautiful, vanishingly rare, precious pale blue dot of a planet is a miracle, an impossible wonder.

 

 

 Mini's latest book is The Greatest Show on Earth, published by Puffin.