Book Review: In Season: A Natural History of the New England Year

Growing up in a big city, like I did, you can easily feel disconnected from nature. Turns out growing up in small town Massachusetts, like The Four-Year-Old, is not that much better. The world around us still feels pretty well-groomed and not terribly wild. Even if we do have a rabbit living under the shed in our backyard. That’s just one of the reasons I was thrilled to find Nona Estrin’s In Season: A Natural History of the New England Year.

The trouble with nature shows

The trouble with nature shows is that watching them makes the Four-Year-Old very curious. Which means I spend an awful lot of time looking at pictures of things I wish I didn’t knew existed. But they also prompt some wonderful questions.

Have you heard the snoring dormouse?

From a friend in California comes news of a video that is too cute to keep to ourselves. Snoring Dormouse with sound, via YouTube. Related articles…

“Can octopuses do gymnastics at the bottom of the ocean?”

Warning: Watching the octopus video will raise all kinds of questions, like: Can Princess Octopuses have Prince Octopuses? And what’s in that big balloony head? Fortunately,…

Sand dollar: Animal, Vegetable or Mineral?

Inquiring Four-Year-Old minds want to know: “Is a sand dollar an animal, vegetable, or mineral?”

And another thing…

Not political, just too awesome to wait until next week’s news wrap-up. ‘Extinct’ monkey rediscovered in Indonesia jungle | Environment | The Guardian. Happy weekend, y’all.…

The Day I Got Lazy and Other News of the Week

Etiquette for preschoolers, new wing of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, and other news of the week

Snot Otters! and Other News of the Week

NPR was a font of interesting biological information this week. First up: Snot otters More specifically: How the Saint Louis Zoo plans to use its new…

“Do old warthogs look like Vanderbilt or Mr. Gronko?”

One afternoon, after spending a pleasant half-hour solving mysteries with the various animals on Richard Scarry’s Busytown Mysteries, my four-year-old began to reflect on the realism of the show’s animation. “Mommyo, do old warthogs look like Vanderbilt or Mr. Gronko?” Turns out what she was really asking was whether warthogs have one pair of tusks or two. “Old warthogs, Mommyo.”