The Practical Naturalist: Explore the Wonders of the Natural World

by D.K. Publishing

Inspirational, informative, and educational, "The Practical Naturalist" is perfect for anyone interested in learning more about their surroundings and looking at their world in a brand-new light. This edition shows readers how to experience the wonders of the world and what creatures live in each habitat.

Genres: Nature, Nonfiction, Science, Animals, Reference, Biology, Ecology

256 pages, Paperback

First published May 17, 2010

About the author

Dorling Kindersley (DK) is a British multinational publishing company specializing in illustrated reference books for adults and children in 62 languages. It is part of Penguin Random House, a consumer publishing company jointly owned by Bertelsmann SE & Co. KGaA and Pearson PLC. Bertelsmann owns 53% of the company and Pearson owns 47%.

Established in 1974, DK publishes a range of titles in genres including travel (including Eyewitness Travel Guides), arts and crafts, business, history, cooking, gaming, gardening, health and fitness, natural history, parenting, science and reference. They also publish books for children, toddlers and babies, covering such topics as history, the human body, animals and activities, as well as licensed properties such as LEGO, Disney and DeLiSo, licensor of the toy Sophie la Girafe. DK has offices in New York, London, Munich, New Delhi, Toronto and Melbourne.

Source: Wikipedia.

Reviews

[Shannon · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book has fairly good information about being a naturalist for kids.

Except for one thing! They suggest that you take your cell phone with you to record what you see. : < If you take your cell phone to record what you see to the places where I watch birds, and it rings and scares the birds, don't be surprised if I rip your cell phone out of your hands and destroy it.

Take a camera. Take and note book and pencil! Take you eyes! Leave your cell phone at home!

[Lea · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is such an excellent book for all ages and experiences in being a neighborhood naturalist. The beginning has tips and tricks and ideas to get started, supplies and how-tos. Then it covers to range of ecosystems and landscapes across the globe. Highly photo driven, this presents gorgeous photos of a plants, animals, insects and ecosystems with small paragraphs, charts, diagrams and informative text to guide the explorer.
It’s a book I would love to have on my shelf and would love to share with every backyard naturalist I know.

[Alaina · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is just the ticket if you want to learn more about the natural world around you, but don't want to read a graduate-level work on ecology. This is a fun book to have on the coffee table. A quick flip through one or two pages is rewarded with helpful or interesting facts and illustrations and photos.

[Kristina · Rating 3 out of 5]

While the photographs and illustrations were fantastic, it really was difficult to figure out what audience this naturalist guide was targeting. With varying (hard-to-read) small fonts, the layout and activities appeared to be geared toward young readers. However, the vocabulary and scientific specifics would absolutely be lost on middle-grade children. So, high schoolers? I’m still not sure. Ultimately, this colorful introduction to environmental basics would probably work best for young families to read (and explore) together.

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

Super fun book to page through! This is exactly the kind of book I loved discovering on my parents' shelves or at the library when I was a kid. I learned a number of fun new nature facts. It made me very excited to start Master Naturalist training next month.

[MJ · Rating 2 out of 5]

Skimmed through the book. Not very practical more of a tour of different habitats around the world. Lot of general information but very good pictures for a DK book.

[Alexander S · Rating 4 out of 5]

The practical advice is solid, and there's a great breadth of naturalist information from cloud types to studying detrivores from a compost heap, but the book is really meant for a British audience and doesn't always make this clear. For example, the book advocates feather collecting which is illegal in the USA, and it is frequently ambiguous about what parts of the world the pictured species can be found. Also, please note that birds are the only animals that it is legal or advisable to feed in America.

[Barbara · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed reading this book. I love nature journaling and collecting different items from each trip I take. This was a perfect book to add as information to help label my drawings or label my specimens collected.

[Anastasia · Rating 4 out of 5]

10 year old Anastasia would have loved this book. 35 year old Anastasia had a hard time seeing the tiiiiinnnnyy type next to the photos. Oh, aging.

This brought me way back to DK books that I would read cover to cover until the spines broke while sitting in my backyard while identifying leaves or holding wooly bears, so this got high stars based on nostalgia alone. My only gripe is I feel like it's a weird hybrid between an adult book and a kid's discovery book. I wanted it to be one or the other and I don't know why.

Either way, nature book crack for adults is always fun.

[AnnaRose · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gorgeous images! This is a very elementary book. It is good for beginners or visual learners. If you want something more in depth, this is not the right book for you.

Ideas - 2.5 stars
Subject matter - 3 stars
Format - 5 stars
Writing style - 2.5 stars
Ending - 2 stars

[Leah Markum · Rating 5 out of 5]

Your favorite civilian natural science book comes with prerequisites: vivid photos from altocumulous clouds to decomposition fungi, key hiding spots of small insects and charismatic critters, and nontechnical but curiosity-provoking descriptions of ecological concepts--all of which fill The Practical Naturalist. Edited by Chris Packham and written by a team of scientists, this book is detailed yet without intimidation for the potential nature hobbyist, young or mature--perhaps young and mature.

Having read many illustrated encyclopedia-esque publications as a kid, this update to the genre elicits nostalgia. It also demands a read to see how differently it looks from Gerald Durrell's well-known 1982 A Practical Guide for the Amateur Naturalist. How bizarre to see a smart phone on the page about the naturalist's tools of investigation! "Vivid" as I said before, is a docile term for how much photos have improved in clarity since Durrell's book. It's a shame we don't have more of this genre, perhaps even bioregion-specific ones so new naturalists can have the inspiration from these but the depth of an ecology book and the usefulness of a field guide.

Like similar reads, this one briefs through natural history concepts, a few pages of handy items like sound recorders and loupe lenses, how to stage sites like wildlife gardens to attract subjects, and mostly tidbit-oriented chapters on ecosystems like grasslands and tundra. An important note: the writer's assume you're from North American or the British Isles for locations like coasts and farm fields.

A perk to this book is the layout. Zoobooks, Eyewitness books, and other visual natural history publications in time gone all had two paged spreads where it's a mosaic of small paragraphs, photos, and diagrams. Sometimes those lay as if on a table with three dimensional specimens like shells or flowers. This theme continues but with more variety. There are photos linked across as a bar comparing habitats in one panorama like bushes, ditches, cactus hedges and stone walls. Some bars are meant to be turned around and read like a calendar--how else do you compare concepts and means of observing organisms existing in various tropical rain forest strata?

An invigorating read and bucket-list cataloging aside (can I visit all those places see all those species?), I do believe an incredible directions for this genre would be to offer more depth. Dedicate each book in a series to a biome or to major bioregions like the American eastern coniferous forest or British maritime. Perhaps they can take the habitat chapters in The Practical Naturalist and make each of those a book. There are a lot of hidden treasures and easy field techniques that are accessible to the amateur scientist that this book was too generalized to to cover.

I love it all the same: inspiration and the tools to carry that inspiration rarely weave into one tome.

[Lady reading under the Willow · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a fascinating book; it's sort of a mini nature encyclopedia. I learned several new things from it, yet it's basic enough for a young student. It has an abundance of vivid photographs (and they're labelled so you know the name of the bird/plant/shell pictured), and all sorts of different habitats and ecosystems were described.

Note: this book is [naturally] written from an evolutionary worldview. Some passages must be taken with a grain of salt/reworded for the discerning parent/teacher when presenting the material.

[Freda Mans-Labianca · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really love this book. For being a person of the Earth, nature, animals and even insects, I thought this was one of the best books I have ever had the pleasure of reading. It would be perfect for children while studying certain subjects, like animal species, or different rocks. You name it, this book contains it!
A fabulous book, that any parent would love their children reading!

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nice guide and handbook to exploring natural habitats. Enjoyed reading for the most part. The editors never missed an opportunity to blame global warming or climate change on humanity. Outside of that the pix and straight forwardness of the writing were wonderful. This book would be ideal for parents and children.

[Eunice · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very nice book. Educational on weather/clouds, lots of photos and information. Nice close-up pics. Some nice sections on animal tracks, trees, conservation, cliffs, desert tracks and so much more! Some drawing instruction, not much. A few activities like making a water viewer and making a pitfall trap for bugs. Overall just beautiful to look at.

[reading is my hustle · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a wonderful book for children and adults. Our #2 loves to draw and paint and this is the perfect book to inspire her. Also, Chris Packham is a pretty amazing dude- he produces wildlife programs for National Geographic and has traveled the world to explore different habitats.

[Laura Gilfillan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Beautiful pictures. Snippets of interesting information. Made me want to get out and explore the natural world. Too bad it's winter. I don't do winter well. Best suited for kids, but enjoyable none the less.

[Tris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really makes me want to go outside and explore. Great for young readers interested in learning about nature and wildlife! Obviously, it's no scholarly textbook. I really enjoy flipping through this book and learning about different habitats.

[Ietrio · Rating 2 out of 5]

It could have been nice, but the author is trying to fit too much in too few pages so he has almost nothing, but from most categories. And the graphics are below average the way they are stuffed into the pages.

[Whole And · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent nature guide covering all corners of the earth with gorgeous images and effective descriptions of habitats, creatures, living and non living things. Well done Audubon. A resource to love and use often.

[Vivian Wiltshire · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great book to look through...lovely photos and short facts about nature and wonders in the
natural world. Great tidbits of information about a lot of natural wonders without long and
in depth explanations. A really fun read and change of pace...really liked it!

[Katherine Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great pictures of animals, habitats and some geological features. Great book for young people to explore the world.

My paperback copy is not quite surviving pretty light use - pages cracking the spine.

Gonna see if my family might enjoy it.

[Jess · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a great book for a 9 year old- just enough info to get them more exciting about the outdoors. For me, I need something a bit more specific

[Brigette · Rating 3 out of 5]

okay for a beginning naturalist's guide, but pretty basic.

[Amy · Rating 3 out of 5]

not a fan of some of the page-photograph layout

[Greta · Rating 3 out of 5]

A surface skim of a lot of varied information on a lot of topics - enough to get a sense of what area might be interesting to explore in more detail using other sources.

[Leslie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book would be good as a reference book or for young readers but not for any kind of substantial study.

[Heather · Rating 5 out of 5]

Confession: I didn't read so of this so much as flip though and enjoy all the pictures. Looks fun.

[Emily Briano · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful book for all ages that surveys the wonders of the natural world.

[Phil · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a DK book so it has a lot of pictures. But I loved it and learned a lot.