Bird House / Bug Hotel by Libby Walden & Clover Robin

Bird House and Bug Hotel are fabulously sturdy, lift the flap, discovery board books which introduce children to the wildlife that they can find in their gardens. We’re huge fans of lift the flap books and these inspire lots of learning and discussion as well as helping children to develop an awareness of the natural world.

The books are packed full of facts about insects and birds that young children may already be familiar with. Their house shaped covers have cutouts which invite you to open the book and the sturdy pages are full of beautiful earthy coloured illustrations. Each book begins with an introduction to the theme and the following pages are full of facts and flaps. The final double spreads give children ideas as to how they can make their gardens bird and bug friendly.

Bird House introduces us to six different types of homes for birds. The birds include ducks, swallows, woodpeckers and owls. The book shows us where different birds live, what they eat and special features or capabilities that they may have. It also introduces children to the concept of migration and the way that birds can find their way home even when they are miles away.

Our favourite bird from the book is definitely the owl and we were absolutely fascinated to learn that ‘Owls can hear up to 10 times better than a human’! The illustration is beautiful too, we love the stars twinkling in the night sky.

Bird House also gives general advice as to how you can make your garden more bird friendly by adding feeders and bird baths.

Bug Hotel introduces us to six different kinds of creepy-crawlies including beetles, spiders, bees and butterflies. We are introduced to where they live, how they catch their prey and features that are particular to each one. It was interesting to learn where stag beetles get their name from, why a ladybird looks like it does and how fast a snail travels.

My daughter is a huge spider fan so she found the facts on spiders fascinating. We were particularly amazed to read that there are about 40,000 different types of spider in the world and they live on every continent except Antarctica!

Bug Hotel also shows you how you can attract different insects and bugs into your garden, we’re trying particularly hard to plant bee friendly flowers in our garden this year.

Bird House and Bug Hotel would make fabulous additions to an Early Years classroom or school library and are great to stimulate discussions about the birds and bugs that could be found in a school garden. Children could even make their own Bird House or Bug Hotel books.

I am absolutely bowled over by the amazing non fiction that is being published for young readers right now. Interesting facts and information are being introduced in such wonderfully original ways which make learning lots of fun, Bird House and Bug Hotel are both great examples of this.

Author: Libby Walden / Illustrator: Clover Robin

Thank you to Little Tiger Press for sending copies of these beautiful little books 🙂