Award Winning New Book
We are pleased to bring to our shop Exploring Nature's Pattern Magic, one of seven winners in
the non-fiction section of the Storylines Notable Book Awards. And also made the list of 50 Best
Books for kids in the NZ Listener.
- Storylines Notable Book Awards for 2016
- "NZ Listener 50 best books for kids"
The lessons that Nature can teach us are infinite. So get on the Pattern Path and spend time observing, experimenting and exploring. Look for unique and interesting patterns when you go on pattern walks and use this book to identify.
Click here to see the book inside
Reviews
"At first look this book is overwhelming - there is so much information, so much colour, so many ideas. Gradually as your eye becomes accustomed to the pattern (and there is a definite pattern to the layout) you realise there are enough ideas here to keep a budding scientist delving for some weeks (and months). Very small lookers will find the puff of a dandelion ball, the etching in leaf skeletons, and the tessellating patterns on the skins of a crocodile or fish or in insect eyes just as enthralling. This is a special book to work at (there is a great index) and to work out. I usually give review books away to schools but this time, sorry, I am going to keep it for myself. " - Barbara Murison, Around the Bookshops
" It is not often I have the pleasure of reviewing non-fiction books for children so I am delighted to share my thoughts on this new one coming out this month. It is a total exploration of all the wonderful patterns we see in nature. Often when we see an insect, animal, plant or indeed any natural thing, we may immediately see the beauty in them but we may not always see the patterns. We don’t necessarily understand the purpose of those patterns either but this book delves in to the reasons and explains it all in very easy terms. The book is a stunning montage of bright natural colours with photos from tiny swan plant seed bugs to helix spirals on snails. Nature is brimming with shapes and patterns that all have purpose. Camouflage has always been one aspect that amazes me. For example, the stripy patterns on tigers help them blend into the long grasses.
" Each page focuses on a particular pattern from spirals, symmetry, and spheres to crystals, fractals and so many more. Information is in bite-size bits to easily digest and tempt readers into looking closely at the patterns. The whole layout is just perfect to dip in to over and over again.
There are four pages dedicated to activities that readers can do to learn more about patterns in nature and this is followed by a very good index page. This is a wonderful book, perfectly packaged and ideal for any home or school library." - Book Trailers 4 Kids and YA
"Exploring Nature's Pattern Magic product reviewsNature displays an endless variety of eye-catching patterns in a variety of form, colour and texture. Patterns help us understand how energy flows through nature's network of complex systems. Patterns show us how nature's organisms survive, how they make things and how life is organised and connected on our planet - Earth. Nature's patterns give us an introduction and understanding of mathematics. She packs efficiently, ties knows, builds columns, makes hexagons, uses spirals and nets and bubbles. But thinking about and seeing the mathematics of nature requires practice. So open your eyes and discover a new way of looking at the world around you." - Kate, Kiwi Reviews
About the Author:
Dee Pignéguy came to New Zealand from Canada in 1963 and trained as a primary school teacher. Her interest in nutrition, healthy food and nature developed as she grew up on a remote coastal property in British Columbia.
Her mother, Joan Donley engaged all her children in their self-sufficient lifestyle, growing fruit and vegetables, raising pigs, chickens, duck and goats and gathering shellfish at low tide.
Dee believes in localised food production, organic growing, practical hands on food growing and people empowerment. She has written the following books:
Grow Me Well - Nutritional Know How for Every Body
Nature’s Techno Tricks: Biomimetics-Science mimicking nature
Gardening For Planet Earth
Sonja’s Kitchen: Sustainable Cuisine in the Cook Islands
Dee is passionate about Biomimetics the science helping find sustainable ways to meet our needs by mimicking natural systems. Because we are living on a planet in crisis, saving the environment is no longer about future generations, it is about saving ourselves.
Dee believes that biomimetics can teach us how nature creates conditions beneficial to life providing a road map to sustainability.