Wild Child: Coming Home to Nature

Description

From climbing trees and making dens, to building sandcastles and pond-dipping, many of the activities we associate with a happy childhood take place outdoors. And yet, the reality for many contemporary children is very different. The studies tell us that we are raising a generation who are so alienated from nature that they can't identify the commonest birds or plants, they don't know where their food comes from, they are shuttled between home, school and the shops and spend very little time in green spaces - let alone roaming free. In this timely and personal book, celebrated nature writer Patrick Barkham draws on his own experience as a parent and a forest school volunteer to explore the relationship between children and nature. Unfolding over the course of a year of snowsuits, muddy wellies, and sunhats, Wild Child is both an intimate story of children finding their place in natural world, and a celebration of the delight we can all find in even modest patches of green.

Patrick Barkham is natural history writer for the Guardian. He is author of The Butterfly Isles, Badgerlands, Coastlines and Islander. He lives in Norfolk with his family.

'Wild Child is such an important book, full of tender and insightful moments. As well as a moving memoir, it is a manifesto for change, which includes many wonderful ways in which you can encourage children to find themselves in nature and, in the process, heal the disconnect experienced by adults too' - Dara McAnulty 'Engaging... elegant and moving. The book brims with tender scenes and small epiphanies ' - Horatio Clare, FT