Botanicum

"This is a large format science book (112 pages) published in collaboration with the Royal Botanical Garden at Kew in London. You can happily leaf through it as an aesthetic experience (indeed the plates are also sold as postcards), but readers can learn a lot of scientific information from this book. As the introduction points out, without plants there would be no humans, and reading it makes you want to understand the patterns of plant diversity that are so important to life on Earth. There are chapters on the first plants, trees, palms, herbaceous plants, grasses, orchids and adapting to environments. We learn the science behind why some plants live in water while others are suspended in mid-air, and about especially intriguing plants such as cacti, parasitic plants and carnivorous plants. The author is an award-winning Professor of Biodiversity at the University of Oxford, and was Director of Science at Kew when she wrote this book. The illustrations, clearly influenced by traditional botanical drawing, are by Katie Scott who has also illustrated several other titles in the ‘ Welcome to the Museum ‘ series which Botanicum is part of. Other science titles in this beautiful book series aimed at 9-12 year olds include Planetarium (winner of the Royal Society Young People’s Book Prize 2019 ), Dinosaurium, Oceanarium, Animalium, Anatomicum, Fungarium, Arboretum and The Story of Life: Evolution . Several of the titles come in an attractive mini gift edition as an alternative to the large format edition, and there are activity book spin-offs as well. If you are looking for books about plants for slightly younger kids (around age 7-10), here are two good options: I Ate Sunshine for Breakfast: A Celebration of Plants Around the World by Michael Holland and Philip Giordano and Humongous Fungus: The Weird and Wonderful Kingdom of Fungi by Professor Lynne Boddy and Wenjia Tang. They are both very colourful and full of scientific information. I Ate Sunshine for Breakfast was shortlisted for the Royal Society Young People’s Book Prize 2021 . What else?"