UNITED KINGDOM AUTHOR · JUVENILE · CHILDREN
Also known as: Davies, Nicola
Nicola Davies (born 3 May 1958), earlier known as Nick Davies, is a Welsh zoologist and writer and is the Children's Laureate for Wales 2025–2027. She is the author of more than 80 books for children and young people, picture books, non fiction poetry and fiction. Her work focuses mainly on biological science, nature and human relationships with the natural world but she has also written about refugees, war, grief and disability. Her work has been published in multiple languages around the world and adapted for the stage and animation. She was one of the original presenters of the BBC children's wildlife programme The Really Wild Show.
One spring day in 1804, when the great painter and naturalist John James Audubon was a teenager, he spied a pair of phoebes near his home in Pennsylvania.
— from Birds
Into the blue
Three years ago, Susan Edsall's Father, a rebuilder and pilot of antique airplanes, suffered a devastating stroke that left him unable to read, write, speak, tell time, understand the alphabet--or fly. The doctors told Susan the best her family could hope for was that he would learn to play checkers. Susan knew if her dad couldn't fly, he'd just as soon not breathe, so she chose another path. Battling the pessimistic conclusion of the experts--and her own looming fears--she and her sister, Sharon, aka the Blister Sisters, decided to take matters into their own hands. With no medical training but double doses of determination, they bushwhacked their own rehab program and got their father back behind the controls of his beloved open-cockpit biplane and into the air. Susan Edsall's Into the Blue is a powerful family memoir about two feisty sisters from Montana who bring their father back to life--and discover themselves in the process. Inspiring, gritty, and often hilarious, it's also the story of anyone who has ever fought back from a dire prognosis to pursue a cherished dream.
Deserts
1987
Discusses, in text and illustrations, the characteristics of deserts, where they are located, and the plants, animals, and people that inhabit them. Includes suggestions for projects, further reading, and a glossary.
Birds
The poems in Judith Wright's Birds volume have long been recognised as among the best-loved poems written in Australia. Many people have grown up with the beguiling rhythms of 'Black Cockatoos', or the jauntiness of 'The Wagtail'. Now, in this new edition, commemorating 25 years since the poems were last published as a single collection, these works appear with six additional poems and a personal introduction by the poet's daughter Meredith McKinney, for whom many of the poems were written. The poems are complemented by full-colour illustrations drawn from the National Library's Pictures Collection, featuring the work of artists such as John Lewin, Lionel Lindsay and Lilian Medland, and William T. Cooper and Betty Temple Watts. Birds is both a celebration of Judith Wright (1915-2000) as writer and passionate environmentalist, and of the centrality of birds in the poet's imagination.