A Field Guide to the Familiar: Learning to Observe the Natural World

by Gale Lawrence

Designed both to encourage beginning naturalists and to challenge more experienced observers to look at the familiar in new ways, A Field Guide to the Familiar offers an introduction to common plants, animals, and natural phenomena. Beautiful drawings add to the book's refreshing approach to nature study. Organized by the seasons of the year, each chapter focuses on one subject and one learning objective. From fall’s first frost to the field crickets of high summer, this innovative guide explores in depth such familiar sights as bumblebees, rainbows, acorns, blueberries, and shooting stars. Each chapter includes descriptive information to help readers identify each subject, as well as life cycle information that shows how a subject functions within a grander scheme. Readers learn that every plant and animal – even the atmosphere – has its own story, and they begin to perceive the natural world as whole, interconnected, and continuous. Whether read sequentially or used as a field companion or handy desk reference, A Field Guide to the Familiar gives every reader a sense of the natural world as an accessible – and endlessly fascinating – place.

Genres: Nature, Nonfiction, Field Guides

288 pages, Paperback

First published December 31, 1984

Reviews

[Oldbluebus · Rating 3 out of 5]

Entries arranged according to the time of year and what one is most likely to encounter makes the book easy to use. Annoying bits of evolutionary content.

[Lizzy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lovely intro guide to basic naturalist principles, focusing on common wildlife, plants, and phenomena throughout the eastern United States. A bit dated, forty years after publication, but a reminder to take delight in things as simple (yet complex!) as toads, mushrooms, and daddy longlegs. Easily readable and split into convenient, short, digestible entries.

[Andree Sanborn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Further explorations for a beginning naturalist, and more great pages to share with my students. We can use one essay a week, in season, and get to know the topics, make new connections and further our curiosity about other things that we see. The seasons in this volume are broken into "half-seasons," as I call them like First Frost and Indian Summer, Late Fall to Christmas. The essays cover things inside our homes: Christmas cactus and cluster flies are two essays. Each season also covers either a constellation that should be familiar to all of us (like Cassiopeia) or familiar phenomena (like shooting stars). This is a wonderful continuation of The Beginning Naturalist. Every family should have a copy for their children and every school needs a copy for their students.

[Erica · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sweet book.

[Willow · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nature has a great many surprising things to observe if you just know where, and how (and when) to look! This handbook is fascinating read little by little through the seasons. Interestingly, rather than beginning the book with spring, the author opens with the first frost of autumn.

Probably my favorite section was about the ghost plant/Indian pipes! I am so excited to look for these next year!! What beautiful and unusual flowers! God's beautiful handiwork never ceases to amaze.

I appreciate how this book features bite-sized chapters on a plethora of natural subjects, sharing interesting information as well as giving some useful hints for locating and observing each. I read this myself but will probably share it with my students in the future. It makes a great nature study guide and is significantly shorter, more portable, and less intimidating than Anna Comstock's "Handbook of Nature Study" (though I'm hoping to re-try that as well--it's just scary huge!)

Note: The perspective is decidedly evolutionary, so language referring to that crops up repeatedly.

[Kate · Rating 5 out of 5]

If Mother Nature herself needed a lawyer, Lawrence could defend her with ease. While she emphasizes answers to the most obvious, riddling questions we all have about the flora, fauna and natural phenomena in New England (Why do so many skunks end up as roadkill? What kind of beetle keeps thudding against the screen-door in summer? Does ragweed have any redeeming traits? How do I pick out the seasonal constellations? Where do Christmas cacti come from? How do rainbows work?)she also reveals the hidden patterns that make each one resilient, unique, and connected to us. No matter how little or how much I had been exposed to these things before reading, I was inspired to look closer in every case, often coming to respect even the most unsavory creatures just a bit more.

[Dee Renee Chesnut · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book rates 5 stars for it is worth keeping on your shelf for reference. It is divided into seasons to help the beginner observe what might be happening at any given moment at the home of the reader. I recommend it to parents of inquisitive children. There are plenty of illustrations by Adelaide Murphy.