Diary of a Young Naturalist
“All birds live brightly in our imagination, connecting us to the natural world, opening up all kinds of creativity. Is this connection really diminishing to the point of no return? I refuse to believe it.”
Classified as a memoir and a work of natural history based in Northern Ireland, Dara McAnulty’s Diary of a Young Naturalist is a stirring account of the author’s observations of the natural world across one calendar year. McAnulty wrote the book between the ages of 14 and 15; he was 16 when it was published.
Diary of a Young Naturalist conveys the immediacy, wonder, and power of one young person’s experiences with nature and biodiversity and how they spur his advocacy for climate action. Beginning with the “rippling excitement” of spring and ending with the “shiver of branches as wind travels through” winter, McAnulty writes with a precise lyricism about moments of intense concentration on aspects of nature and natural change. He grounds his account in his own identity and daily life with his family: “I’m Dara, a boy, an acorn,” who has “the heart of a naturalist, the head of a would-be scientist, and bones of someone who is already wearied by the apathy and destruction wielded against the natural world.” He also weaves in his experience on the autism spectrum and how this relates to his mode of attention and relation to the natural world and fascination with its details and sensory realms and rhythms.
In his book, McAnulty narrates his story of moving from solely private and familial encounters with nature, to interacting with adult naturalists who support and mentor him, to forming an “eco group” with other young people in school and joining community conservation and youth climate activism efforts. Through it all, he illuminates the natural world around him by means of his passionate attention, as in writing about the starlings “Flying in and around our heads, a river wind, they rise and fall on the barn roof where cattle are feeding on silage. . . . We stop by the twisted branches of a hawthorn hedge, and look out and above to the starling shadow funnelling and sweeping across the sky. Confluent wing beaters, shapeshifters.” And he concludes with the pointed acknowledgement that in the current climate, young people “are invited to ‘have a voice,’ to share their ideas, hopes, dreams, anguish, and then very little actually happens. The adults never dole out an invitation for us to sit down and plan things.” Diary of a Young Naturalist has won numerous prizes, including the 2020 Wainwright Prize for UK Nature Writing and the 2021 British Book Award for Narrative Non-Fiction.
©2022 ClimateLit (Rachel Conrad)
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Publisher: Milkweed Editions, 2020
Pages: 224
Lexile Score: 960L
ISBN: 978-1571311801
Audience: Ages 14+
Format: Biographies, Nonfiction, Novels, Youth-Authored
Topics: Biodiversity, Climate Action, Conservation, Environmental Destruction, Hope, Natural History, Naturalists, Wonder, Youth Climate Activism
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