A friendly introduction to hands-on study of nature in your own backyard.

Nicely illustrated guide for beginning naturalists, youthful or adult. Looks at spiders, fungi, earthworms, galls, wildflowers, vines, lichens, maples, starlings, squirrels, and other common but interesting "finds." Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Though we often think of the natural world as lying far from our front door, often the most interesting aspects of nature can be found in the kitchen, basement, or backyard. Discover Nature Around the House explores the properties, processes, and phases of the plant and animal life in our own homes, from ferns and cacti to spiders and dogs. With just a few essentials, such as a field notebook, hand lens, and bug box, readers will find both straightforward information and all kinds of activities to uncover the fascinating, diverse ecosystems that flourish right our noses.

Hiking, trekking, camping, climbing, biking, skiing, snowboarding, swimming, whitewater rafting, and mountaineering with children of all ages 50 family adventure trips--close-to-home, budget-wise, and national parks How to plan, pack, and organize trips, especially tricky with infants and toddlers and extended, mixed, or blended families A helpful guide for parents who want to keep traveling, remain active in the outdoors, and get their kids interested in nature and the environment. Blends interactive parenting and coaching skills with outdoor sports, adventure, and travel. Taking children on camping trips or rafting trips can be a challenge, but by balancing safety and adventure, independence for older children, and family participation, everyone can have fun. A section on safety includes basic first aid and what to put in emergency kits.

This book examines animal welfare themes in fiction, and considers how authors of the last two centuries undermine dominative attitudes toward the nonhuman. Appearing alongside the emerging humane movements of the nineteenth century and beyond is a kind of storytelling sympathetic to protectionist efforts well-described as a literature of protest. Compassion-inclined tales like the Dolittle adventures by Hugh Lofting educate readers on a wide range of ethical questions, empathize with the vulnerable, and envision peaceful coexistence with other species. Memorable characters like Black Beauty and Beautiful Joe, Ivan the gorilla and Louis the trumpeter swan, Hazel and Cheeta, Mr. Bultitude and Doctor Rat do not merely amuse. They are voices from the margins who speak with moral urgency to those with ears to hear. This broad survey of ethical themes in animal fiction highlights the unique contributions creative writers make toward animal welfare efforts.

The essays in this volume explore the broad range of ideas about nature reflected in twentieth-century concepts of natural gardens and their ideological implications. They also investigate garden designers' use of earlier ideas of natural gardens and their relationship to the rich model that nature offers.

Introduces the three types of seashore and the creatures and features of each. Presents related experiments.

Offering a fresh approach to bringing life to schools and schools to life, this book goes beyond touting the benefits of learning gardens to survey them as a whole-systems design solution with potential to address myriad interrelated social, ecological, and educational issues. The theoretical and conceptual framework presented creatively places soil at the center of the discourse on sustainability education and learning garden design and pedagogy. Seven elements and attributes of living soil and learning gardens are presented as a guide for sustainability education: cultivating a sense of place; fostering curiosity and wonder; discovering rhythm and scale; valuing biocultural diversity; embracing practical experience ; nurturing interconnectedness. The living soil of learning gardens forms the basis of a new metaphoric language serving to contest dominant mechanistic metaphors presently influencing educational discourse. Student voices and examples from urban schools provide practical understanding of how bringing life to schools can indeed bring schools to life.

Annotation Case pack changed to 42 from 48 with reprint.

The goal of Discovery: Science as a Window to the World is to relay the excitement of sciene by exploring selected topics in biology and medicine in a way that reveals the process of discovery. Each chapter will focus on the curiosity and creativity that drives scientists to wonder, observe, question and experiment. One impetus for this project is the recognition of a growing demand among instructors for a book that departs from fact-stuffed textbooks and instead engages students in the discovery process at a personal level. Emphasizes the process of discovery through interviews and key experiments. Written by a best-selling author. Provides an in-depth, conversational look at the science behind several "hot topics" in biology. Each chapter traces the beginnings of the field with stories of how serendipity and scientific inquiry intertwine. Presents the background to a field by including the scientific literature-so the reader does not have to do a literature search or plow through a review article. Many essays introduce the work of overlooked scientists or "unsung heroes." Alexey Olovnikov (telomeres), Leroy Steven (stem cells), to name a few. Also, well-known scientists are interviewed: Stanley Miller, Carl Woese, John Gearhart, and others. The essays show how ideas interact and coalesce from different lines of research. Highlights the role of the media in interpreting science for the public.