CMP Review 2023-10-04

October 4, 2023

My children and I have so many fond memories due to The Handbook of Nature Study. Our favorites include feeding chickadees by hand, awakening moss, and building a cricket habitat from which we watched a tiny maestro play his violin.

Did you know the author, Anna Botsford Comstock, credits her mother in particular for kindling her love and appreciation of the natural world? She’s a self-taught nature illustrator, writer, philosopher, and the first female professor at Cornell University. Her book—a compilation of 8 years of leaflets (the majority of which Comstock wrote herself)—was published in 1911 by Cornell and has never gone out of print!

Its 3 lbs. and over 900 pages might seem daunting, but it’s really an easy-to-use guide. If you’d like to see how, find my article “Reading Nature’s Truths” in this month’s VISTA bundle from Wild+Free with glorious images from @aolander.

@rbaburina