The latest book releases for curious minds

NATURE’S TREASURES

100 NATURAL OBJECTS WITH AMAZING TALES TO TELL

AUTHOR BEN HOARE

ILLUSTRATOR KALEY MCKEAN

PUBLISHER DK CHILDREN

PRICE £20 / $24.99

RELEASE OUT NOW

“Nature always has something interesting and unknown for us to discover”

How many times have you been down to the seashore and picked through the flotsam and jetsam at the tideline? Or foraged through the undergrowth in the woods, or sifted through the pebbles at a cliff face? What did you find and what did you think about it?

Perhaps there was a mermaid’s purse, the skull of an unidentified animal, a sparkling geode, a fossil or a strange seed casing. Nature always has something interesting and unknown for us to discover, even as adults in an environment that we’re intimately familiar with, and best-selling nature writer Ben Hoare knows this. Here he has compiled a selection of his favourite natural treasures into this attractive, gilt-edged hardback.

These 100 choice objects are evenly split into four main categories: animals, plants, minerals and ‘made by nature’ – eggs, nests and even animal excreta. Owl pellets and dung beetle balls have incredibly fascinating tales to tell as long as you can get over the fact that they’re little balls of sick and poop respectively. And that’s what Nature’s Treasures is really about – it’s not a spotter’s guide to what can be found in nature, but the broader tales of where these objects came from, how they came to be, their place in the world and their impact on humanity.