Slow Down: bring calm to a busy world with 50 nature stories by Rachel Williams and Freya Hartas

Walker Books, 2020. ISBN: 9781916180512. 128pp.
(Age: 4+) Highly recommended. Calling all nature loving children! This is the book for you! It is a beautiful mixture of short stories about the wonderful things that happen in the great outdoors.
Each 2 page spread explores an animal and something interesting they do. It could be snakes shedding their skin, a rainbow occurring, bees pollinating, weaver ants building a nest or a butterfly emerging from its cocoon. They are beautifully illustrated by Freya Hartas and this really makes the book. The colours are vibrant, yet sometimes soft and mellow-and all at the perfect level. Every page you turn brings not only new information but the most amazing illustrations of the animal in the spotlight. You can see their distinguishing features, their faces and often images of their habitat.
My children are 5 and 9 and are both enthralled in this book. The text is written so that Miss 5 can understand, but with a few tricky words thrown in so in conjunction with the illustrations provided master 10 was able to extract the higher meaning.
We also used some of the animal illustrations as inspiration for an drawing session!
This book is the most beautiful glimpse into the awesome things that happen in nature and within the animal kingdom.
Children from ages 4 years and up will really enjoy the information and the illustrations. 5 out of 5 - a book that should be in every library.
Lauren Fountain