Curiositree: Natural World: A Visual Compendium of Wonders from Nature - Jacket unfolds into a huge wall poster!

by AJ Wood, Mike Jolley, Owen Davey (Illustrator)

Overview

The award-winning Curiositree: Natural World explores, through 67 exquisitely illustrated charts, the myriad ways in which plants and animals have adapted to survive.

Discover the interconnectedness of the natural world and learn why living things look and behave the way they do in a series of visually compelling information charts, maps, and cutaways, all illustrated in a nostalgic, vintage style.

Packed with incredible facts about the natural world and the animals that populate it, the whole family will enjoy the full-page spreads grouped into the categories of habitats, species, and adaptations.

The jacket of this large-format book unfolds to a huge wall poster showing the brilliant adaptations of a range of birds. Use the colored ribbons like a bookmark, or to mark your place so you can return to pages that you found especially interesting.

Celebrate the extraordinary resourcefulness and resilience of the natural world with amazing facts about:

• Habitats, ecosystems, and biodiversity
• Migrations, from the wildebeest of Africa to the red crabs of Christmas Island
• All types of camouflage, from predator-dazing zebra stripes to the fur of the Artic fox, which changes to white in winter to match the snow
• Life in the rain forest, the “lungs of our planet”
• All sorts of seeds and their variety of ingenious designs
• Life cycles of creatures, from butterflies to the curious axolotl (a type of salamander)

As the human species, Homo sapiens, is challenged now to find ways to live and survive in harmony with nature, curiosity will provide the answers. So, set out on your own adventure in this book, and discover why the natural world is worthy of your unending curiosity.

Also available from the Curiositree series: Human World.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781847807823
Publisher:	Wide Eyed Editions
Publication date:	07/12/2016
Series:	Curiositree Series
Pages:	112
Sales rank:	654,645
Product dimensions:	10.40(w) x 13.40(h) x 1.00(d)
Age Range:	8 - 12 Years

About the Author

Amanda Wood began her career in illustration at the Natural History Museum, London, and went on to be the founding Editor and Publisher of Templar for more than 30 years. In her time there, she published and nurtured numerous Greenaway winners, and edited and wrote groundbreaking series such as The Ologies, which have sold over 19 million-copies worldwide. Today she writes and runs her own small press from her home in Surrey.

Mike Jolley has worked as an Art Director in children’s books for over 25 years. He also sells artwork made from found objects, under the name ‘Box 2’. It was during one of his many junk shop visits that the idea of using midcentury school information charts for Curiositree first took shape. He lives on a cliff overlooking the English Channel.

Owen Davey is an award-winning freelance illustrator living and working in the UK. His work has been published in every continent except Antarctica.

Table of Contents

Introduction
CHART No.1 Living Things
CHART No.2 The Living World
CHART No.3 A Guide to Animal and Plant Groups
CHART No.4 What Is a Habitat?
CHART No.5 World Habitats
CHART No.6 The Fight for Survival
CHART No.7 Amazing Mammals, Great and Small
CHART No.8 Skeletons and Skulls
CHART No.9 The Blue Whale
CHART No.10 Micro-Creatures
CHART No.11 Animals on the Move
CHART No.12 Life at the Ends of the Earth
CHART No.13 Surprising Penguins
CHART No.14 All About Beaks and Feet
CHART No.15 What Is a Bird?
CHART No.16 All About Feathers
CHART No.17 How to Hide
CHART No.18 Chameleon—Master of Color
CHART No.19 What Is a Reptile?
CHART No.20 Desert Life
CHART No.21 The Mighty Saguaro
CHART No.22 Super Spines
CHART No.23 Bewildering Beetles
CHART No.24 Life in Tropical Rain Forests
CHART No.25 Who Lives Here?
CHART No.26 The Curious Aye-Aye
CHART No.27 Living in the Dark
CHART No.28 Super-Powered Owls
CHART No.29 Who’s in the Tree?
CHART No.30 The Secret Life of Plants
CHART No.31 All About Trees
CHART No.32 Leaf Shapes
CHART No.33 Food Chains and Webs
CHART No.34 Extraordinary Hunters
CHART No.35 Spiders and Their Webs
CHART No.36 Interesting Insects
CHART No.37 Flowering Plants
CHART No.38 All Sorts of Seeds
CHART No.39 Life in the Honeybee Hive
CHART No.40 Animal Architects
CHART No.41 A River Journey
CHART No.42 Who Lives Here?
CHART No.43 Swamp Life
CHART No.44 All About Amphibians
CHART No.45 What’s in the Pond?
CHART No.46 Wild Romance
CHART No.47 Heavenly Dancers
CHART No.48 All Kinds of Nests
CHART No.49 All Kinds of Eggs
CHART No.50 The Peculiar Platypus
CHART No.51 Dancing Sea Horses
CHART No.52 Living Together
CHART No.53 Fantastic Fish
CHART No.54 A Perfect Partnership
CHART No.55 Marine Invertebrates
CHART No.56 Ocean Layers
CHART No.57 Creatures of the Deep
CHART No.58 The Blue-Ringed Octopus
CHART No.59 Warning Colors
CHART No.60 The Art of Disguise
CHART No.61 Butterflies and Moths
CHART No.62 Two Lives in One
CHART No.63 Surviving the Seasons
CHART No.64 On Top of the World
CHART No.65 Who Lives Here?
CHART No.66 The Life of a Log
CHART No.67 Our Changing Planet
Index
 

Editorial Reviews

Davey's drawings are charming and subdued and fill the pages with excellent compositions…The reader can journey in continuity from start to finish or, alternatively, use the color-coded arrows to search freely for any particular subject matter. The book is filled with fun facts…

The New York Times Book Review - Juman Malouf

★ 06/20/2016
This first book in the Curiositree series features 67 charts exploring aspects of biodiversity. Readers need not read chronologically, but can thumb through the charts, which are organized conceptually: yellow tabbed charts address habitats and environments, orange tabs discuss particular species of plants or animals, and charts marked with blue tabs look at animal behavior and adaptation. Davey’s crisp, polished digital illustrations call to mind vintage science textbook images. Despite the wealth of information, the presentation never becomes overwhelming; rather, the charts flow organically from topic to topic (charts about plants lead to ones about food chains, then to discussions of predators), subtly underscoring the interconnectivity of the wild. It’s a richly layered and expertly composed volume that may leave readers with the impression of having wandered through the halls of a natural history museum. Ages 8–12. (July)

Publishers Weekly

A NSTA-CBC  Outstanding Science Trade Books for Students K-12 for 2017—NSTA-CBC

"For a more comprehensive discussion of the world’s profuse creatures and their ways and ecosystems....with chic illustrations by Owen Davey....[and] packed with short, informative paragraphs by Amanda Wood and Mike Jolley."—The Wall Street Journal

"It's a richly layered and expertly composed volume that may leave readers with the impression of having wandered through the halls of a natural history museum."

—Publishers Weekly starred review

"'Natural World' reads like a book of make-believe....The hook is: They are all true."—The New York TImes Book Review

From the Publisher

10/01/2016
Gr 3 Up—A "cabinet of curiosities" in book form meant to be browsed through rather than read cover to cover or used strictly as a reference. While some elements of the elegant design and illustrations are a bit retro, the volume contains a wealth of up-to-date information and facts about habitats and species. Each chartlike page displays some aspect of nature, from the many varieties of feathers or leaf shapes to the ecosystems of the Arctic and rain forest. The slipcover folds out into a wall poster of birds, insects, and migrators, and three colors of ribbon bookmarks emerge from the binding to facilitate navigation. Color-coded arrows visually refer readers to other pages on related subjects. The digitally created illustrations resemble traditional media with a subtle, sophisticated palette, adding to the symbiosis of old and new design techniques. The index lists species names but not some of the concepts mentioned, such as photosynthesis or camouflage. There is a chart devoted to skeletons and skulls yet neither word appears in the index. VERDICT A unique choice as a gift book or for libraries interested in branching beyond wildlife basics.—Suzanne LaPierre, Fairfax County Public Library, VA

School Library Journal

2016-07-02
A broad overview of the biosphere, with hundreds of stylish plant and animal portraits.Kitted out with a foldout poster jacket, multiple ribbons, and a color-coded system of margin tabs, this oversized album collects 67 topical “charts” presenting, in no apparent order, surveys of world habitats and ocean zones; introductions to taxonomy and food webs; arrays of bird beaks, feet, eggs, nests, and feathers; group portraits of related organisms and closer looks at selected single ones. Animals are the main focus, though other kingdoms draw at least some notice. Davey’s digital illustrations look like cut-paper collages—flat of surface and perspective, composed of multiple elements of diverse hue and pattern. The figures are generally recognizable and capable of putting on a grand show, as with one display of birds of paradise and another of tropical reef denizens. The lighting, though, is murky throughout, sometimes to the extent that physical details are obscured. Similarly, captions and blocks of explanatory text, which are all in minuscule type, are hard to see against the darker backgrounds. More problematically, readers will be left in the dark by unamplified claims that inorganic things are “not made of cells but of tiny things called particles,” and “some fish are more closely related to other vertebrates than they are to other fish.” Best for casual browsing; for systematic, reliable information, look elsewhere. (index) (Nonfiction. 10-12)

Kirkus Reviews