How to Chat Chicken (What on Earth Books)
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How to Chat Chicken (or, to give it it's full title, How to Chat Chicken, Gossip Gorilla, Babble Bee, Gab Gecko, and Talk in 66 Other Animal Languages is my new book published by the wonderful What On Earth Books in the UK and US in October 2023. It's a very silly book illustrated by the really quite brilliant Adrienne Barman that acts as your phrase book to the animal kingdom: it's your guide to the language of cats, dogs, elephants, dolphins, bees and lots more.
Over 128 pages I translate everything from orangutan whoops to cicada creaks, so you can make sense of this noisy planet. Oh, and you can try out the phrases yourself... You can look through a few pages from the UK Blad here where you can start practicing your best cat, dolphin or panda impressions. :) |
Everything You Know About Sharks is WRONG! (Nosy Crow)
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When I first started writing the Everything You Know is Wrong series it was obvious from the get go that there had to be a book about sharks. Is there another more vilified group of animals? But sharks are mind-blowing. Yes, they are incredible predators, but they're also intelligent puzzle-solving, design-inspiring, deep-sea living, occasionally stunning, horrendously endangered super-fish. I. Love. Them.
I'm so happy to have worked again with the extremely talented Gavin Scott, who's extraordinary illustrative powers burst out of every spread (and our spread on Batoids is one of my favourites from all three books so far). So if you liked ...Dinosaurs and ...Minibeasts, I really think you're in for a treat with Everything You Know About Sharks is Wrong! |
Animal Super Powers: The Most Amazing Ways Animals Have Evolved (Walker Studio)
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The book I've been wanting to write since starting my PhD research, Animal Super Powers is a whirlwind tour of the animal kingdom - both alive and extinct - with a twist. Each double-page spread showcases animals from all corners of the Tree of Life, but each uses a particular super-skill - from projectile tongues to prehensile tails - that they have evolved completely independently to each other. This is my kid's book about convergent evolution - the repeated appearance of the world's most useful adaptations. I'm so happy Walker Studio have published this in the UK, and I'm so stoked it's illustrated by the amazing Viola Wang.
Animal Super Powers is out in November 2022. |
Everything You Know About Minibeasts is Wrong (Nosy Crow)
Shortlisted for the Teach Primary Book Awards 2023
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The successor to dinosaurs, Everything You Know About Minibeasts is WRONG is out now. It's my book about arthropods (and a few other small pals). Whereas Everything You Know About Dinosaurs is Wrong was about how the nature of scientific research means that human knowledge is constantly in flux, Minibeasts' main theme is the mind-blowing reality of biodiversity - and how even though you might think you know or understand a type of animal, there are always exceptions to any rule you try to adorn natural history with. The world of invertebrates is as unexpected as it is mysterious, and I hope this book (again beautifully illustrated by the peerless Gavin Scott) helps open a few more minds to our ten quintillion friends.
You can take a peek at some of the inside of the book here. |
Everything You Know About Dinosaurs is Wrong (Nosy Crow)
Shortlisted for the Teach Primary Book Awards 2022
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After a few years of tinkering, I'm so excited to finally introduce Everything You Know About Dinosaurs Is WRONG - my book about palaeontology, palaeontologists and the slippery ever-changing world of dinosaurs. Nosy Crow were the most incredibly enthusiastic bunch of editors and designers to work with and I still can't quite believe the whole book is dripping with Gavin Scott's incredible illustrations of playful yet biologically accurate dinosaurs. I really tried to make this the most up-to-date dinosaur book on the market and, thanks to Susie Maidment and the other wonderful palaeontologists who spoke with me as I was researching, I think it just might be! Translated into 12 languages so far, including Chinese, Korean, Russian, Spanish, French and German.
You can flick through the first few pages here |
Bird: exploring the winged world (Phaidon)
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Grown-up book alert!
I'm very proud to have been one of the contributors for Phaidon's beautiful new Bird: Exploring the Winged World. As in Animal: Exploring the Zoological World (see below!), Bird is a visually stunning and broad-ranging tome celebrating humankind's fascination with birds. I wrote about Carl Cotton's taxidermy, Charles Paine's graphic design, Xavi Bou's time-expanding photography and a whole heap of other incredible images. You can pre-order it from Phaidon's website here. |
Why Can't Horses Burp? (Thames and Hudson)
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The third and final book in Thames and Hudson's Curious questions about your favourite pet series, Why Can't Horses Burp is out of the stables. Hooray! Lily Snowden-Fine has done an amazing job (as usual) with the text and it's probably the widest ranging book of the trilogy, covering domestication, evolution, sport, fame... it's got it all!
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Danny Dodo's Detective Diary (Thames and Hudson)
One of the Reading Agency's "must-read" titles for their Summer Reading Challenge 2021
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Danny Dodo's Detective Diary is out! Extinction is a huge subject, and massively important, and I hope Danny is a not-too-depressing guide though it. As well as encountering recently extinct animals (like Tasmanian tigers, pygmy elephants, moas, and river dolphins), Danny helps explain why animals are endangered today, and what we can do to help them.
What I'm most excited about in this book (apart from the fact that it features Rob Hodgson's illustrations) is that the extinct animals Danny encounters all became extinct since the last major ice age - during the Holocene: all the animals in the book all struggled to survive in a world when humans proliferated around the world. I'm also pretty chuffed because Danny is the third in a suite of books Thames and Hudson have released on animals from the past (on dinos, and ice age beasts) that were written with Professor Mike Benton - who is one of the loveliest palaeontologists in the world! You can track down a copy on Thames & Hudson's website, your favourite high street bookstore or at the super splendid bookshop.org. |
Curious Questions About Your Favourite Pets (Thames and Hudson)
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Thames and Hudson have published two books this year I have written on a pet theme for the Curious questions about your favourite pet series. These were really fun to write and I am very much pleased to now know which dogs like surfing and how sensitive cats' noses are.
Both Why Do Dogs Sniff Bottoms and Why Do Cats Meow are illustrated by Lily Snowden-Fine and are available from Thames and Hudson's website (Dogs and Cats), Amazon, and the wonderful Bookshop. |
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Animal (Phaidon)
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I was so excited (and honoured) to be part of the writing team and panel of experts who chose the 300 images that feature in Phaidon’s beautiful new tome Animal: Exploring the Zoological World.
I wrote about a fascinating range of images, from netsuke, to the earliest experiments in night photography, via the first European sketches of Darwin’s more enigmatic South American fossil mammal discoveries. I’m extremely proud to have been part of this, Phaidon’s visually stunning and broad-ranging survey that explores and celebrates humankind's ongoing fascination with animals. |
The Amazing Animal Atlas (Flying Eye Books)
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The Amazing Animal Atlas was three-years in the making and was a collaboration between myself, Flying Eye Books and the downright crazy-talented Gaia Bordicchia. The Atlas is a beautiful, super-sized guide to some of the most spectacular animals found around Planet Earth, from the dolphins of the winding Ganges River in India to the desmans of Northern Europe’s thick forests. We really wanted to build something immersive and cinematic and Gaia’s illustrations totally achieved this. Sit down, open it out, and go for a spin around our extraordinary world.
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Triassic Terrors (Flying Eye Books)
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The Triassic Period often doesn’t get too much of a look in compared to the Jurassic that followed it, but this was a fascinating period of Life on Earth when tiny dinosaurs fell prey to giant crocodile-like creatures called Pseudosuchians.
This was a time of diminutive dinos, when the land, seas and skies were inhabited by a host of strange prehistoric creatures. Many of the animals of the Triassic period were predecessors to the lumbering giants of the Jurassic but some were never seen again! This was the first true age of the dinosaurs – and so much more. So get out your tools, dig in and discover Triassic Terrors! |
