Hey Blog! Wow, this summer is busy! It’s also had some late evenings, which is great (apart from me being too grumpy to get on with my lessons the next morning) as sometimes you see things which you don’t in the day – especially if it’s wildlife watching!
On Friday last week we went badger-watching in a local Wildlife Trust reserve. It was around 9 o’clock before the badgers came out, but we saw either two or possibly three of them! I hope they enjoyed the handfuls of peanuts that we had put out for them. On Sunday we travelled to a different reserve in anticipation of glow-worms, really insects, where the females are flightless and their abdomen glows, while the males fly around, attracted to the light. Unfortunately we didn’t have quite so good luck that time (Badgers on Friday – 2, Glow-worms on Sunday – nil)!
You may be wondering what all this has to do with a book review. Well, the link is nature, as the book I am reviewing today is Diary of a Young Naturalist, by the Young Naturalist himself, Dara McAnulty. It is quite a recent book, only published in 2020, but has already won several awards for its stand-out, beautifully worded, and passionate information. The nature activist and TV presenter Chris Packham has described it as “really, really special,” which shows you what a good book it is!
The diary, which is split into the four seasons, details a year of difficulty, hope, and of course, wonderful, magnificent wildlife! It was written in 2019 and covers Dara’s 14th year, a year of upheaval – the McAnultys moved house, school, and natural surroundings, which made Dara feel overwhelmed by the clutter of packing boxes and new, different smells; it was also the year Dara felt his first sparks of activism for nature coming through.
The book is mainly about Dara’s encounters with the natural world. These range from travelling to Scotland to look for goshawks, to observing birds at his garden bird table. He also details a visit to Rathlin Island where he watched puffins, gannets and other seabirds, and at home he remembers finding frog spawn in the garden pond. At his new home he details time spent sitting in a hammock in the garden, where he says he can find time to think and concentrate on what his social life and ordinary life are throwing at him.
Dara writes in a unique style, described by some as “poetic prose” which demonstrates exactly how it feels – though it’s prose, it has stunning poetic imagery and texture. Most books just stop at 2D imagery, but Dara goes deeper, into 3D and then detailing what happens over time.
Dara says in the book he feels like an imposter: “Just one single act of walking out and I’ve been crowned,” he says, meaning he doesn’t feel he deserves all the praise for his championing nature. However I think that it’s that act of choosing to walk out for nature that is all too rare, which makes it even more valuable. I think he probably feels like it shouldn’t be necessary to praise the few who do this, it should be more like something everyone should be ready to do.
Dara is autistic, and so is the rest of his family apart from his dad. Dara explains that he sees the world intensely, and this provides a vibrant and extremely emotive background for the story. It seems that so many of our nature activists have that strength a feeling – a need to preserve what we have, to keep connected to where we come from. I do not have a diagnosis of autism, but sometimes I think my brain works in a slightly different way to most people, and I can really connect to what Dara writes. I feel that same sense of, “What can we do? I am only one person, and the entirety that one person can do is inspire others to help them, until there are enough people to complete the task.” I feel a real thrill that nature is alive and there to explore. Does a tree forget its roots? No, of course not. So why should we forget our roots, our history of being part of nature? In fact, why should we think being part of nature is history? It is now! It is nature that will always be able to win through, nature that will enable us to combat the climate crisis and other problems; solving nature will be the first step in getting to a solution.
It doesn’t matter who you are – from a professor in an office block to a hermit in the arctic tundra to a boy writing a blog at his desk in Derbyshire, I think we all should be ready to read this book at some point in our lives! It lets you feel – as if you’ve suddenly stepped into the autistic, determined, and fizzing-over-the-top brain of Dara, whose life is shared through the book. It’s the kind of book you need to read, as surely as evolution will carry on through the years. A book of seeking, finding, hope, despair, and interconnectivity with nature.
If you want to find out more about Dara, go to https://daramcanulty.com, where you can find out all about him, his book, and his blog Naturalist Dara, which he did before writing the book – should I write a book too?!