Fiona Danks – författare

'A beautiful and inspiring book, bursting with practical suggestions which will appeal to every child’s imagination. Reading it, I wanted to rush out to my nearest wood immediately!'Julia Donaldson, author of The Gruffalo  Who doesn’t love a stick? The universal toy for children and adults alike, sticks can provide endless opportunities for outdoor adventures, creative play, woodcraft and conservation.Packed with 70 ideas and projects, The Stick Book will give you loads of inspiration for using the wonderful, free and all-natural toy: the stick. As The National Museum of Play (New York) pointed out when they put the stick in their National Toy Hall of Fame, 'It can be a Wild West horse, a medieval knight's sword, a boat on a stream, or a slingshot with a rubber band …' A stick can be anything you want it to be. This book will give you loads of inventive ideas for spending quality time outdoors with your children – from the adventurous to the magical, getting creative to playing games, making music to building bug hotels. Try your hands at:Making a DIY tent or denCreating a woodland monster or magic carpetWild weaving or making your own natural wind chimesPlaying capture the flag or a woodland mapping gameMaking a bird feeder or bug hotelWith 70 ideas and projects, there will be something for every little adventurer, dreamer or budding ecologist in The Stick Book. All you need to get started is … a stick!

You don’t need to live right on the water’s edge to have fun at the beach! The Beach Book is all about finding wild places at the seaside, as well as by lakes and rivers and making the most of opportunities to explore and enjoy all these places have to offer. You can have fun:Discovering beach wildlife (eg. rock pooling, crabbing and fishing or making a rock-pool viewer) and exploring sand dunes and beach combing.Making the most of lakes and rivers by foraging, damming and diverting streams and boat racing.Using natural resources to play and invent new games (e.g., stone Jenga and skittles, ball runs and boules or  funny face games.Being creative (e.g., making driftwood monsters, marram grass dolls and creating sand paintings).

**SHORTLISTED FOR THE WEEK JUNIOR CHILDREN'S ILLUSTRATED BOOK OF THE YEAR 2023**From the authors behind The Stick Book and many other outdoor adventure favourites, this interactive one-of-a-kind creative scrapbook offers children an outlet for creativity inspired by the wild world.  This truly unique book contains prompts for all kinds of creative activity based around the natural world around us, from drawing to writing to mixed-media collage. Readers will be encouraged to draw on their creativity, to express themselves without fear of being judged, and to make their book really WILD! They will need scissors, pens, paints, tape, glue and a magnifying glass, plus lots of wild materials and their wildest creativity, as this book becomes filled with keepsakes from their own outdoor adventures. From finding the faces hidden in pictures of trees, to collecting ingredients for a spell to keep nature safe, to sticking the feathers back onto a mythical bird, these prompts and activities will provide hours and hours of entertainment as they take children on flights of fantasy through the natural world. Readers can colour outside the lines, do the activities in any order and go at their own pace. The mixture of art, creative writing, collecting, games, wildlife-watching and imaginative prompts will appeal to kids with all kinds of interests, and there are no rules!

Unleash a year of creativity with Make Every Week Wild, no screens required!  From bestselling duo Fiona Danks and Jo Schofield authors of outdoor favourites like The Stick Book, comes Make Every Week Wild, the much-anticipated follow-up to Make This Book Wild (shortlisted for The Week Junior Children's Illustrated Book of the Year 2023).  This interactive scrapbook is packed with 52 nature-inspired activities – one for every week of the year – and it’s designed to be taken outside, scribbled in and splashed with mud. This trusty book is your canvas as you explore the great outdoors. From drawing and painting, to making things and natural treasure hunts – guess what? There are NO RULES! You can colour outside the lines, do the activities in any order, scribble on the cover... the possibilities are endless.  You will need a few simple supplies – scissors, glue, tracing paper, carboard, clay, pens, paints, string, jam jars, and wild materials like leaves - plus your wildest imagination, as this book becomes filled with keepsakes from your own outdoor adventures.  Kids and their grown-ups will love: Creating crafty leaf collages and bark rubbings Forest bathing to wash away any worries Spotting birds at dawn with a wild breakfast Making natural stamps from something as simple as an apple Hunting for snails shells and sketching their spirals Crafting stick puppets for a shadow show For the grown-ups, this book also includes helpful sections on: How to make the most of this book with your child The mental, physical, and creative benefits children gain from outdoor play Perfect for rain or shine, weekend adventures or quiet afternoons, these fun activities provide hours of screen-free entertainment all year round. Along the way, children will build confidence, creativity, and a deeper connection with the natural world.   So, embark on your year-long adventure and Make Every Week Wild!