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Category: Laura Knowles

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Did you know that there are 20,000 ways to be a butterfly? That's a lot of butterflies. Maybe you need to have a long curly proboscis, or lay your eggs in  just the right spot, so the caterpillar babies can eat as soon as they hatch.

One thing you will need, is to have dazzling, bold colours, which look fantastic when you fly or are just staying still. And two antennae to smell for the flowers pollen and to help with balance. Some butterflies are very large with long wing spans. Another fact is that if your antennae are fuzzy, that means that you are not a butterfly but a moth!

Laura Knowles is the author of this exceptional book and she manages to choose just the right words, albeit just a few, to show diversity, interest and a real joy in the natural world.

Catell Ronch is the illustrator and her images of a number of coloured butterflies are stunning, each image is a true representation and in bold detail.

Words and Pictures are the publishers, part of Quarto Knows, and have an excellent way of publishing a great range of non fiction books which will appeal and interest young children.

We recommend for ages 2- 7, and especially early years, but How to Be a Butterfly will be a book that an adult will also pick up at the end of the day and not put down.

Sue Martin


Dolphinbooksellers.co.uk is part of SmithMartin LLP

A retail resource for the best children's books, entry point into our children's and community library procurement and supply service. Offering a miscellany of news and featured authors for all our readers, whatever their age.


Published on
We Travel so Far cover image
Buy this book from The Dolphin

Small stories of incredibly giant journeys. However far you have travelled these stories will surpass your longest journey.

The whales, birds, butterflies, turtles, fish and eels of all shapes and sizes make the most amazing journeys imaginable.

We Travel So Far is a book which will capture your imagination and set you off on a journey to find out more.

I was intrigued by; the Caribbean Spiny Lobsters which travel at the bottom of the sea in a long line, and the Arctic Terns which journey from North Pole to the South Pole. I have often watched them as they fly close to the water on the North Norfolk beaches.

There are so many journeys and so many different ways of travelling across the globe. Laura and Chris have made the pages intriguing, with a combined use of text and beautiful colour coordinated illustrations. From Whooping Cranes, as the ghostly white fliers, to the African elephants, the giants of the savannah, each page gives an insight into a world full of movement and travel.

At the end of the book, there is a page on migration data and also a page on people as travellers. We travel for adventure, to find food, to find freedom and much more, but we all travel.

Great book! Well written by Laura Knowles and illustrated by Chris Madden, published by Words and Pictures part of the Quarto Knows group.

 

Sue Martin


Dolphinbooksellers.co.uk is part of SmithMartin LLP

A retail resource for the best children's books, entry point into our children's and community library procurement and supply service. Offering a miscellany of news and featured authors for all our readers, whatever their age.


Published on
Once upon a Jungle - cover image and web link
Buy this book here...

Once upon a time there was a jungle... but that was just the beginning. Delve into the undergrowth to discover the story of a food chain.

A brilliantly, beautiful book  published by Words and Pictures and Quarto Knows, whose concept of delivering visual storytelling is wonderfully portrayed in Once Upon a Jungle.

The black background of the jungle undergrowth gives the brightly coloured images huge impact. I love the preying mantis in bright green, who of course was about to eat the ants, who was then gobbled by the lizard and... well it would spoil it to tell you more.

Laura Knowles has previously written It Starts with a Seed. Her interest in environment and nature has a huge impact on her books. The illustrator James Boast, has a unique style which children will love.

 

The opportunity both for learning and pure enjoyment is huge in this hard backed book. It is a book to keep at home, to have on the shelves at the library and to deliver a project on in the nursery and school.

Sue Martin


Dolphinbooksellers.co.uk is part of SmithMartin LLP

A retail resource for the best children's books, entry point into our children's and community library procurement and supply service. Offering a miscellany of news and featured authors for all our readers, whatever their age.


Published on
It Starts with a Seed - cover image
Buy this book from The Dolphin...

Many congratulations to the winner of the Inaugural Margaret Mallett Award for Children's Non-Fiction which will be awarded at the English Association's General Meeting on 24th May.

It Starts With a Seed is written by Laura Knowles and illustrated by Jennie Webber, published by Words and Pictures in September 2016. We recommended the book in the autumn of 2016 on Dolphin Books  and are delighted that it has achieved such well deserved success.

It is the story of a seed as it journeys from the branches of a tree into the ground and becomes first a young sapling and then a tree. It introduces children to how the eco-system works, it teaches children about the life cycle of a tree, it has stunning artwork and words that easily engage the reader.

''The prize has been established by the English Association in memory of Margaret Mallett, a Fellow of The English Association and a long-serving member of the editorial board of the journal English 4-11, who died after a short illness in March 2017. Margaret was a passionate advocate for high quality books for children, and in particular non-fiction books. She had a deep and wide-ranging knowledge of children's literature, and her reviews of new titles in Books for Keeps and the School Librarian were hugely admired. She was able to get to the heart of a book and deliver a perceptive judgement that was both just and generous''.

 

Dolphin Books recommend  It Starts with a Seed to all our readers, a great book and we are delighted that The English Association begins the awards in great style, in memory of Margaret Mallett, with such a beautiul book.

 

 

 

Sue Martin


Dolphinbooksellers.co.uk is part of SmithMartin LLP

A retail resource for the best children's books, entry point into our children's and community library procurement and supply service. Offering a miscellany of news and featured authors for all our readers, whatever their age.