All About New Zealand’s Garden Wildlife is a fantastic full-colour reference book for all the little plants and creatures you’re likely to encounter in your suburban backyard.
I’m liking
Dave Gunson’s wildlife illustrations are both accurate and simply beautiful. The information is helpfully organised into broad categories (Fungi, plants, spiders, birds etc), so it is easy to find specific information if that’s what you’re after, but the book is also a pleasure to read from cover to cover. There is a full index at the back.
Things that made me go hmmmm
My children are pretty hard on books, so if there was one thing I’d change it would be to have a hard-cover binding.
The conclusion
Our family are already Dave Gunson fans, having enjoyed his colouring in book on NZ birds. This book has the same high level of artistic skill that we expected, and combines it with lots of interesting and accessible information about each topic. The target age range would be upper-primary and above, but a keen younger child would appreciate a page or two as a read-aloud. My eight year old read it from cover to cover, and we were peppered with new facts and information for the rest of the evening.
