We are delighted to welcome Chris Modafferi, author of A Year in the Forest, 365 facts and activities to inspire you all year round, to Story Snug. Beautifully illustrated by Magdalena Konecná the book takes us from January through to December and includes an activity, an observation or a poem for each day of the year. Alongside developments in the natural world A Year in the Forest also encourages readers to keep a journal to ‘consider how nature matches your own journey.’
A Year in the Forest is jam packed with information and activities to take a reader through the year. This sturdy hard backed book has a beautiful green ribbon bookmark to ensure that you never lose your page!
Each month starts with a poem, a short description of monthly features, has a journalling prompt and includes wildlife and flora to spot. It also includes a day that highlights what can be foraged during that month – even in January and December it’s possible to find something to eat in the forest!
It’s impossible to do justice to this wonderful book in a short review so we’ve chosen an activity for each month to highlight the myriad of different ways that a reader can learn about and engage with nature throughout the year.
- January: Adopt a tree
- February: Forest floor growth
- March: Hug a tree
- April: Photosynthesis
- May: Go pond dipping
- June: The importance of biodiversity
- July: Cloud spotting
- August: Make a Map
- September: Bake an Autumnal Treat
- October: Magical Properties of Plants
- November: Animals’ Winter Stores
- December: Make a Memory Tree
There are many more wonderful activities including making bird feeders, bug hotels, nature mobiles, jumping in puddles, making a wildflower summer salad, walking barefoot and joining a nature survey.
Several international days are referenced including The International Day of Forests, World Bee Day, International Earth Day and World Rainforest Day.
Huge congratulations on your beautiful new book, Chris, and thank you for visiting Story Snug. How do you even start writing such an informative and interesting book?!
This may be clichè to say, but as a child I never thought I could become an author, and I would probably add to this and say that had I not worked on hundreds of books as an editor, with in-house experience at Penguin Random House, Bloomsbury and Scholastic, I probably wouldn’t even know where to start! So, if you too would love to write illustrated books for kids but don’t know where to start, here is my cheat sheet, using my newly released A Year in the Forest as a real-life example.
The very first lesson I learned when I was an editor was that writing for illustrated non-fiction is a visual experience for the reader, and so every spread (the combination of two facing pages) needs to be a new experience. Books like Fantastically Great Women by Kate Pankhurst and Do You Love Bugs? by Matt Robertson (which I was very lucky to work on) are a great example of this. So, whenever I start a new project, my first port of call is Excel.
A Year in the Forest is one chunky book – a total of 381 pages to be exact! – with one page per day of the year, so this was one big Excel sheet and required a lot of meticulous planning. I wanted each spread to look like its own world, and I also knew that I wanted a theme and feel for each month of the year. This process took quite a lot of finessing and tweaking, and even once I began writing the book, I realised I still needed to make some changes as I went along. This was my book skeleton, a necessary piece of the process to make sure I knew exactly where I was going. My biggest piece of advice? Become a planner – but allow for extra changes along the way!
Then came the writing phase – which is the funnest bit! As this was such a big project, my editor and I thought it would be best to batch the first draft into months: this meant that while she was editing a month of the year, I was writing the next one. We were both busy bees, and this allowed me to spend extra time on each month to research the spreads even more.
Splitting your book into chunks, especially when you are writing non-fiction topics, can be especially helpful, giving you concrete deadlines to hit while also writing in small, achievable steps.
When you’re writing non-fiction for children, as I mentioned before, you’re also thinking about how each page will look and feel. I like writing tiny artwork briefs just before the actual text of the manuscript, so the illustrator knows exactly what to do before they get started. You can leave your briefs quite open, allowing the illustrator more artistic freedom. This is what I like to do. And good thing I did, because Magda’s artwork was phenomenal!
Once I finished writing, I got to just enjoy seeing Magda’s artwork come in! It was like a reward after months of researching and wordsmithing.
And then, after checking proofs and more proofs, the book is done!
Wow! It’s so interesting to hear about how you approached writing the book, Chris. It’s impressive how much research has gone into making A Year in the Forest so informative and fun whilst subtly incorporating learning and personal development.
With the end of the year creeping closer this would be an amazing Christmas present for a young nature lover who can chart their own development alongside seasonal changes.
About Chris
Chris was born in Philadelphia, USA, where she learned to appreciate the beauty and magic of nature on long walks through Pennypack Park with her dad and sister. As an adult, she moved to London to work as an editor, creating books for the RSPB and The Woodland Trust, and spending weekends exploring the green wonders of Highgate Wood and Hampstead Heath. Today, she lives in Italy by the Mediterranean Sea, writing books with her two cats, Frodo and Dracula, always by her side. Her first authored children’s non-fiction book, Earth’s New Animals, illustrated by Harriet Hobday, was published by Hachette.
Thank you to Big Picture Press for sending a review copy of A Year in the Forest
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