Leisa Stewart-Sharpe (text) and Helen Shoesmith (illustrator), Wild Life, The Extraordinary Adventures of Sir David Attenborough, Hachette, May 2022, 32 pp., RRP $26.99 (hbk), ISBN 9781526364159
We are huge David Attenborough fans in our household. We love watching each new David Attenborough documentary series, marvelling at the natural world captured and relating to his passion for wild life. When I received the picture book Wild Life, The Extraordinary Life of Sir David Attenborough to review, I was understandably beside myself with joy.
This charming picture book details the life of David Attenborough. Starting with his early life and his passion for exploring nature and learning about the natural world. It quickly details his time at Cambridge and in the Royal Navy before he was employed by the BBC (I did not realise that David Attenborough started out as a camera operator filming shows about subjects such as knitting and gardening!) However, a show featuring animals from the London Zoo was the turning point for David Attenborough. He wanted viewers to be able to see animals in the natural habitat and that was the start of Sir David’s wildlife documentaries.
His resultant career has spanned seventy years and has seen him visit every continent on Earth, employing innovative techniques to film all sorts of creatures from the extraordinary to the rare. Some of the funny and touching moments of David’s career are captured in the text and pictures, for example, his encounters with gorillas in Rwanda, with Lonesome George a Pinta Island tortoise and Christmas Island’s red crabs. However, the highlight on David’s conservation work is perhaps the most touching. Noticing the environmental changes caused by humans and climate change, David has talked with presidents, princes and protestors to champion Earth’s protection.
The book finishes with an introduction to many of the animals David met on his travels and includes an interesting fact about each. Finally, there is a double-page spread of the animals and plants named after Sir David Attenborough.
The illustrations are beautifully executed with colour and life present in each image. Whilst the drawings of the animals are not technically accurate, they are enchanting and mischievous inviting the reader to search the tiny details of each image.
Recommended for all David Attenborough fans and readers aged 5 years and over. This book will hopefully inspire another generation to explore the natural world and to champion its preservation.
Reviewed by Anne Varnes
