An entertaining, practical, and illuminating manual for enjoying the outdoors with kids.
A wide-ranging guide explores outdoor adventures with children.
Fresco, a mother of twin girls, opens with the question, “Can parents still be adventurous?” Her answer is an unequivocal and enthusiastic “Yes!” The author’s stories of hitting the trails with children—whether hiking with 2-week-old twins in 40-degree weather; multiday biking, skiing, and rafting excursions; or 13-year-olds completing a lengthy day trek—will convince readers that plenty of time outdoors is the best gift they can give their kids. Clear and pragmatic advice explains how to bring children along safely, be prepared, and have fun. Each of the seven chapters covers a different age—ending with middle schoolers—weaving tips and lessons learned throughout the trip descriptions. Appealing contributions from Fresco’s daughters highlight the kids’ perspectives, while sidebars offer details such as location, distance, weather, and terrain for 22 excursions. More than 60 photographs illustrate the family’s expeditions, and key information is set off in “Tip” boxes. Most of the book takes place in and around the author’s hometown of Fairbanks, Alaska, where temperatures are below-zero Fahrenheit throughout the winter months. Vacations hiking the Grand Canyon and biking around Iceland provide variety and show the joys of being off the tourist-beaten path. (All of the lessons are equally applicable to places with less extreme climates.) The writing is outstanding, with a humorous, down-to-earth vibe. Fresco’s insights about child development and honesty about her own foibles are highly relatable. She doesn’t sugarcoat inconveniences, unpleasantness, parental worries, and the ubiquitous dirt. At the same time, the tales powerfully convey nature’s beauty, family togetherness, delightful moments, and all the ways getting outdoors and meeting challenges help build kids’ determination, confidence, independence, and resilience. The book examines everything the average family might need to know: going on potty breaks in the woods; dealing with bugs and wildlife; planning a trip; selecting gear (new, secondhand, and DIY); packing light; layering clothing; keeping kids warm, dry, fed, and amused; and bringing friends along. Whether readers are planning an ambitious escapade or a simple, local day hike with children, they will find engaging storytelling, ample food for thought, and a wealth of useful information.
An entertaining, practical, and illuminating manual for enjoying the outdoors with kids.Pub Date: Jan. 15, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-60223-439-0
Page Count: 210
Publisher: University of Alaska Press
Review Posted Online: March 3, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.
A charming bird journey with the bestselling author.
In his introduction to Tan’s “nature journal,” David Allen Sibley, the acclaimed ornithologist, nails the spirit of this book: a “collection of delightfully quirky, thoughtful, and personal observations of birds in sketches and words.” For years, Tan has looked out on her California backyard “paradise”—oaks, periwinkle vines, birch, Japanese maple, fuchsia shrubs—observing more than 60 species of birds, and she fashions her findings into delightful and approachable journal excerpts, accompanied by her gorgeous color sketches. As the entries—“a record of my life”—move along, the author becomes more adept at identifying and capturing them with words and pencils. Her first entry is September 16, 2017: Shortly after putting up hummingbird feeders, one of the tiny, delicate creatures landed on her hand and fed. “We have a relationship,” she writes. “I am in love.” By August 2018, her backyard “has become a menagerie of fledglings…all learning to fly.” Day by day, she has continued to learn more about the birds, their activities, and how she should relate to them; she also admits mistakes when they occur. In December 2018, she was excited to observe a Townsend’s Warbler—“Omigod! It’s looking at me. Displeased expression.” Battling pesky squirrels, Tan deployed Hot Pepper Suet to keep them away, and she deterred crows by hanging a fake one upside down. The author also declared war on outdoor cats when she learned they kill more than 1 billion birds per year. In May 2019, she notes that she spends $250 per month on beetle larvae. In June 2019, she confesses “spending more hours a day staring at birds than writing. How can I not?” Her last entry, on December 15, 2022, celebrates when an eating bird pauses, “looks and acknowledges I am there.”
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.Pub Date: April 23, 2024
ISBN: 9780593536131
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
Are rivers alive? Macfarlane delivers a lucid, memorable argument in the affirmative.
The accomplished British nature writer turns to issues of environmental ethics in his latest exploration of the world.
In 1971, a law instructor asked a musing-out-loud question: Do trees have legal standing? His answer was widely mocked at the time, but it has gained in force: As Macfarlane chronicles here, Indigenous groups around the world are pressing “an idea that changes the world—the idea that a river is alive.” In the first major section of the book, Macfarlane travels to the Ecuadorian rainforest, where a river flows straight through a belt of gold and other mineral deposits that are, of course, much desired; his company on a long slog through the woods is a brilliant mycologist whose research projects have led not just to the discovery of a mushroom species that “would have first flourished on the supercontinent [of Gondwana] that formed over half a billion years ago,” but also to her proposing that fungi be considered a kingdom on a footing with flora and fauna. Other formidable activists figure in his next travels, to the great rivers of northern India, where, against the odds, some courts have lately been given to “shift Indian law away from anthropocentrism and towards something like ecological jurisprudence, underpinned by social justice.” The best part of the book, for those who enjoy outdoor thrills and spills, is Macfarlane’s third campaign, this one following a river in eastern Canada that, as has already happened to so many waterways there, is threatened to be impounded for hydroelectric power and other extractive uses. In delightfully eccentric company, and guided by the wisdom of an Indigenous woman who advises him to ask the river just one question, Macfarlane travels through territory so rugged that “even the trout have portage trails,” returning with hard-won wisdom about our evanescence and, one hopes, a river’s permanence and power to shape our lives for the better.
Are rivers alive? Macfarlane delivers a lucid, memorable argument in the affirmative.Pub Date: May 20, 2025
ISBN: 9780393242133
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: March 8, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2025
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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