Ana Sampson: Wonder (Macmillan Children’s Books 2021)
A book about a museum. But not only about the museum itself, but also about those who saw it and were inspired by it. The museum is not just any museum either: the Natural History Museum in London. Every year, five million visitors look at the exhibited treasures, which are only 1% of the museum’s 80 million objects. Behind the scenes, containers with preparations, rare books, works of art and pressed plants stretch for kilometers. The museum not only preserves the treasures of the past, but also thinks about the future. More than 300 researchers work in the museum, and 10,000 guest researchers visit here every year.
The poems in the collection are grouped according to topics, from the fauna and flora to space. The authors of the works include great classics such as Walt Whitman, Rabindranath Tagore, Emily Dickinson and Lord Tennyson, as well as contemporary authors such as Neil Gaiman. I also found a poem by Kipling that I studied in elementary school. In addition to the poems, you can also read interesting facts about the museum and the most famous exhibits, and the book is illustrated with drawings and engravings from the museum’s collection. And the cover was designed by the great Melissa Castrillón.
This fantastic collection is all about the wonder of nature and why we need to take care of our special planet.
