Have you ever read a book and immediately wanted to press it into the hands of others, exclaiming, “read this!” – whist knowing that if you gave away your copy, you’d be bereft?

It’s January 3rd, 2024, and I may already have found my favourite book of the year. So much so that I’ve ordered three more Katherine Rundell books (including two children’s books) so I can keep hearing her voice in my head.

This is a beautiful, enthusiastic, and hopeful book full of weird and wonderful information on animals which are endangered in our world. Some of it is fact. Much of it is poetry. All of it is wonder.

Each chapter deals with a different animal, and none are more than eight pages long, and stuffed with delight.

I particularly liked the chapter on Swifts which, she writes, “mate in brief mid-sky collisions, the only birds to do so, and to wash they hunt down clouds and fly through gentle rain, slowly, wings outstretched.”