Daisy and Jack’s Perfect Pond by Rachel Lawston and Beatriz Castro

💐Nature inspired wonder

🌟Daisy and Jack’s Perfect Pond

🎨Beatriz Castro beatrizcastroilustradora

📚@‌pikkubooks – thanks for inviting me onto this wonderful Book Tour @‌purplecrayoncreative

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Daisy and Jack’s Perfect Pond

Daisy and Jack’s Perfect Pond is another magical book from this wonderful duo who know just how to cast a spell and transport you into the wonders of nature.

Other titles in the series include Finn’s Garden Friends and Mia Makes a Meadow. Both truly wonderful books. I’ve spotted some teacher resources for Finn’s Garden Friends that you can find here and I’ll update if any arrive for the other books.

This time we’re off to create a pond after siblings Daisy and Jack discover a frog in their garden. Their initial plans are thwarted somewhat, but it’s not long before they begin to see the creatures of the garden making use of their mini wetland.

Sparking a Love of Nature

We really loved the cross sectional images of the pond and ground on one of the spreads.

This book has sparked off a real fascination with Floss, so get ready for lots more pond inspired learning from us!

So Much to Love

👓You know how much I love a bespectacled main character!
🤎Diverse characters.
🏳️‍🌈LGBTQ+ incidental character representation – two dad family.
🎨Exquisite, delicate illustrations that have you exploring each spread for ages. I always love the ‘Can you spot…’ page at the back of the book.

🐸Explores the life cycle of a frog as well as distinguishing features between frogs and toads.
💦Gives steps on how to make a pond.

My Nature Trail

I’m delighted to see that Pikku Publishing have brough Rachel and Paul Lawston along with Lia Visirin and Beatriz Castro together to produce a nature lovers’ dream – My Nature Trail. It’s a book that’s organised by season and packed full of information and activities.

Helping children to explore genres is such an important part of widening their reading for pleasure and helping them to understand their personal preferences. When your child enjoys and identifies with particular book series and characters it’s lovely to see an opportunity to diversify their range of genres.

My Nature Trail can help to do this. If your child has enjoyed nature stories such as Finn’s Garden Friends, Perfect Pond and Mia Makes a Meadow or any other nature inspired story book then an activity book like My Nature Trail helps to introduce children more to non-fiction texts in a familiar setting.

My daughter adores being arty and this is a book that is stunningly crafted. I love that Rachel, Lia and Beatriz all worked on the artwork in this book but it comes together as a seamless, cohesive collaboration. It was a thought that fascinated my daughter and she enjoyed thinking that creativity isn’t something that needs to be done in isolation.

There’s so much I love about My Nature Trail:

The different fonts used are a delight.
The layout of each spread is clear, uncluttered and invites the reader to dip in and pick up a tasty morsel of a fact or idea.
The balance of text and illustrations is ideal. It’s the perfect book to explore together with younger children or for children who are becoming independent readers to enjoy on their own.
The purple strap invites you to collect bits of nature and turn the book into a nature journal. There are designated spaces at the end of each season and at the end of the book to reflect on your nature journey through the year.

The book gives facts, starting points to observe nature as well as arts and crafts projects to ignite your nature spark!
Learning how to look after nature and making the world a better place one small step at a time.

My Nature Trail is a book for all nature lovers and anyone who enjoys being creative and learning how to look after the natural world. A joy of a book.

Four Ideas for a Book

Joining in with @‌mrsbrownsbookbox with #4ideasforabook
🐸Create your own pond either real or pretend. Plan out what you will need, how much it would cost etc.

🐸Make a jumping frog using origami – here’s a great little YouTube tutorial.

🐸Draw the life cycle of frogs. What other life cycles do you know? I love the Fiddlesticks Education Frog life cycle pack. Some of the resources included in he pack are in the image below.

🐸Visit ponds and wetlands all year round to see the changes in the pond as we cycle through the seasons. Return frequently to see the magic happen. You might like to take along the free pond spotter downloads below when you visit.