Great Lakes Nature: An Outdoor Year, Revised and in Color

Does the world need another naturalist's field guide? It's a terribly crowded genre, but if the field guide in question is Mary Blocksma's Naming Nature, the answer is a resounding yes. Blocksma ordinarily writes for children, and her patient, warm-hearted explanations of why nature works the way it does are just right for the curious adult as well. ("I've been sharing my cabin with several hundred spiders this summer," she writes, "and I've found them to be quite retiring.") Blocksma argues along the way that we could all use some "natural literacy" to go along with the cultural literacy that's lately been bandied about. She's right, of course, and her book, which favors the Midwest and Atlantic Seaboard regions of the United States, is a lively start.