An essential guide to encourage children to explore, enjoy and benefit from the natural world around them. ** "This thought-provoking book should provide many opportunities to discuss and learn from the natural world. Highly recommend for classrooms and libraries." –   School Library Journal Starred Reviews ** Children are used to hearing about how important it is to protect nature, but they may not fully understand how the natural world can positively impact their emotional wellbeing. With that in mind, this book looks to enhance this time spent outside and show children how nature can be fun, uplifting, consoling, and even offer companionship. This is a book about how nature can touch us all and help us with our lives (especially when we might be feeling bored, sad, or lonely). Children learn about the ways in which they can be comforted, inspired, and uplifted by examples of nature such as: – a flowing river – a cow in a field – clouds in the sky – rabbits in their burrows – stars at night – or a cuddle with a favorite puppy. This is an inspirational book, not just educating children about the natural world, but teaching them to love and connect with it. Beautiful illustrations and a tone that is encouraging, warm and accessible makes it easy for children, and their favorite adults, to relate to. ILLUSTRATIONS BY TYLA MASON bring animals and plants to life to get children excited about connecting with nature. - EDUCATIONAL AND FUN encourages children to discover what’s amazing and interesting about nature. - EXPANDS EMOTIONAL LITERACY by helping kids explore how their environment makes them feel. - AGES 8 AND UP with fun facts and engaging activities. Gr 3-5-This unique book helps young readers deal with their emotions and uncertainties by introducing them to the beauties and subtleties of nature. While children might know that being close to nature is good for them, they may not know how to best learn from the great outdoors. This book, with its vibrant illustrations and its intriguing prompts, provides a bridge of understanding. Each spread follows a similar pattern. First, it introduces something found in nature-an animal, a sign of weather conditions, or a geographic feature-and then offers information about it. Second, it provides a colorful illustration for readers to study. Third, it suggests how readers can learn from observing nature and how these observations can improve their lives. Each spread makes clear suggestions and summarizes everything with a short statement written in bold. For example, when reading about an ant colony, readers learn the ways ants work together. An illustration shows a colony accomplishing a variety of tasks while the text asks, "Why are ants so appealing? Why do we like watching them and finding out about them?" It suggests that the answer is because ants are cooperating: "It's good to cooperate." VERDICT This thought-provoking book should provide many opportunities to discuss and learn from the natural world. Highly recommended for classrooms and libraries -Myra Zarnowskiα(c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. ***What Readers are saying:*** "The great outdoors, a place of discovery, of wonder, of beauty and of joy. We are often told that it is important for us to protect nature but how often are we encouraged to embrace it, to share in its bounty, to explore it in order to have a positive impact on our own well-being? Now is your chance, Tyla Mason has simply and stunningly illustrated this School Of Life fact-filled exploratory extravaganza." –  Armadillo Magazine "This thought-provoking book should provide many opportunities to discuss and learn from the natural world. Highly recommend for classrooms and libraries." – School Library Journal Starred Reviews "I like that it made emotions real life things and helped me understand my emotions more and why I sometimes feel the way I do." – Niamh (age 8), Goodreads "I think this book is great because it creates the bigger picture and let’s you see nature in a different way. It is a very educational yet fun and uplifting. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who has a passion for nature or wants to learn about it." – Goodreads review "Wow this is simply beautiful. I really loved the colourful pages, illustrations and text." – NetGalley review "As a teacher, I think this would make a wonderful resource for my classroom. It displays facts about nature in a unique way with beautiful illustrations and offers children a different approach to considering nature. Each page offers opportunity for reflection and mindfulness with lots of talking points for whole class discussions (or discussions with your child before bedtime)." – NetGalley review "A wonderful walk through nature, covering all areas and aspects of nature. Very beautifully written and kept us captivated." – NetGalley review "T