How to Grow a Garden by Frances Tophill and Charlotte Ager

2025   

 

Adult, fluent reader, ages 9 -99+, ages 7-11, Tophill Frances, Ager Charlotte, rewilding, environment, picture book, non-fiction, horticulture,   

This book would make an excellent contribution to a primary school library and interest wouldn’t be restricted to those who are passionate about the environment. It is aspirational.   

 A contents page near the beginning of the book identifies sections: Flowers and Herbs, Trees, Hedges and Edges, Grass, Fruit and Veg, Water, Exotic Plants and Further Resources.

Each double spread shows pictures of the topics discussed and provides bite-sized information.

At the end of each section there are suggestions about what you can do in each season.

The book opens with an introduction about how the text works. It invites the reader to join in an interesting journey.

Throughout the text there are many activities suggested to the reader.

There is a glossary and an index at the end of the book.

This works like a standard picture book in that the illustrations give additional information.  For the most part it uses a plain sans serif font with simple ‘a’s and ‘g’s. There are a few lines here and there in a font that looks like handwriting.

The book is in a quite a large format.    

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A Celebration of Beatrix Potter, Arts and Letters

 

2002 

In this volume are the responses in art and words by thirty artists to the life and work of Beatris Potter.

Excerpts of: The Tale of Peter Rabbit, The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin, The Tailor of Gloucester, The Tale of Two Bad Mice, The Tale of Mrs Tiggy-Winkle, The Tale of the Pie and the Patty-Pan, The Tale of Jeremy Fisher, the Tale of Jemina Puddleduck and The Tale of Mr Tod are reproduced with Beatrix Potter’s original illustrations.

The artists’ responses include a few words about their reaction to the story and what they know about Potter.

Artists are: Jon Agee, Jen Corace, Pat Cummings, Tomie dePaola, Tony DiTerlizzi, Matthew Forsythe, Stephanie Graegin, Chuck Groenink, Chris Haughton, Brian Karas, Jarrett Krosoczka, Betsy Lewin, E. B. Lewis, Renata Liwska, Wendell Minor, Kelly Murphy, Brian Pinkney, Peggy Rathmann, Chris Raschka, Peter Reynolds, Dan Santat, Judy Schachner, Laura Vaccaro Seeger, David Soman, David Ezra Stein, Melissa Sweet, Rosemary Wells, Brendan Wenzel, David Wiesner, Pamela Zagarenski, and Paul Zelinsky

Many of the artists recognise as I do that much of Potter’s work isn’t just about cute little animals; there is a darker side to nature.

This is a picture book, 110 pages long. Potter’s work is presented ragged right as it was originally but the texts form the artists are blocked. It uses a serif font with difficult ‘a’s and ‘g’s but this is large and double-spaced.

This is certainly a special edition but it is also packed with information.  It would also be useful for project work on Potter. 

 

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Wilding by Isabella Tree and Angela Harding

 

2024 

I hesitated to put his book on this site even though it is marketed as a children’s book and indeed I purchased it as such. In fact, anyway, it wouldn’t be out of place in a primary or secondary school library though interest in it would be restricted to those who are passionate about the environment.   

Primarily, though, I would define this as a picture book for adults – a rather odd concept in the UK though this is a strong genre in France and Belgium and other French-speaking countries.  The voice here is of one adult speaking to another. But children can often understand adults.

Isabella Tree and her husband Charles decided to rewild their 3,500 acre farm in West Sussex over twenty years ago.

The book opens with a note form the illustrator about her experience of working at Knepp.  After a brief introduction by Isabella Tree we are given an outline history of the farm including the all import years form 2000 up to the present day.

There is a lot of information about what happened and all of this is illustrated in detail.  Pictures really give us more detail about processes and indeed what everything looks like.  So, as in a picture book for pre-schoolers the pictures add to the information in the text, expect that this is non-fiction. The last few pages contain ideas for what we can do in our own environment.

There is a useful glossary at the end and then a list of further resources. This would be very helpful for a student who is conducting a project about rewilding.   

The book, in hard back, and large format is 96 pages long.  It uses a serif font but the text is ragged right. Each section of text is short but packed with information.

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Never Forget You by Jamila Gavin

  

2022

Dodo, Gwen, Noor and Vera meet at boarding school.  Just before the outbreak of World War II.   Dodo’s parents live in Germany and are Nazi sympathisers. Gwen acts as narrator and is at school because her parents live in India. Noor is from India, daughter to a Sufi philosopher and sees fairies.  Vera is Jewish.  Her parents and younger brother have been seized by the Nazis. She lives with her aunt and uncle in Paris.    

Noor’s story is partly true.  The other characters are fictional.

Dodo dies when she becomes involved in the rescue form Dunkirk. She has been working as a spy, looking into the work of Nazi sympathisers.

Gwen tells us very little about her work but it is top secret and involves maps.      

Noor becomes a member of SOE – Special Operations Executive. She works with the Resistance in France but is captured and executed.

Vera works for the Resistance in Paris and is very involved in forging documents in order to allow Jews to escape the Nazis.

There is some romance for all four girls and an upbeat ending for Gwen and Vera.   

This is a very long read – 500 pages of blocked text. There is a short note at the end about Noor Inayat Khan      

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Wicked Little Deeds by Kat Ellis

 

2021 

Dead-eyed Sadie is said to appear just before a member of the Thorn family is about to die. This seems indeed to happen as people around Ava Thorn die or are murdered.  She becomes a suspect in a murder case and in turn she and her unlikely ally, Dominic Miller, suspect one of their teachers.

The Millers and the Thorns have been enemies for some time.  Dominic and Ava find out out that his may go back to the time of Sadie Burnett Miller who was left to die by the Thorn family. Her eyes were gouged out.  Despite Dominic’s sister Freya and Ava’s best friend Ford being two of the people who die, Ava and Dominic become close.

Ava’s parents were killed in a car accident and Ava blames Dominic’s father, whose car slammed into theirs on an icy evening as they drove home. Ava’s Uncle Ty and his wife Caroline have to sell the manor, the Thorn family home, before the bank forecloses and Ava is astounded that they sell it to the Millers. Freya and Ava clash particularly; they are both promising art students and compete for the summer school art scholarship. Ava still endures nightmares and more recently has also had  hallucinations. She puts this down to the trauma of losing her parents and of being the one who found Freya’s body.  

The truth is horrible.  Caroline is a fortune-seeker. Uncle Ty resented Ava’s father as her grandfather had left Ty none of his fortune.  Much of the proceeds of the sale of the manor has been put into a trust fund for Ava. But Caroline and Ty plot to kill her and frame her for Freya and Ford’s deaths. Caroline has systematically been adding a drug to Ava’s drinks. She and Ty were also instrumental in her parents’ death and the arrival of Mr Miller was just a lucky (unlucky?)  coincidence.

Ava and Dominic almost get trapped in the manor which is burnt to the ground.      

There are also strong bildungsroman elements in this.  Ava grows: she loses her family home and the value she attached to it, she overcomes the enmity between the two families and she finds out that her beloved uncle Ty and her close friend Ford were not quite what they seemed.   

This is a fast-paced novel and keeps readers engaged right to the end. Yet there is also plenty of solid character development.

This is a long book – 385 pages of blocked text in a serif font. 

Find your copy here 

Note, this is an affiliate link and a small portion of what you pay, at no extra cost to you,  may go to Bridge House Publishing.