Ben's Reviews > Diary of a Young Naturalist

This is good for what it is, mostly a sort of nature diary, but I didn't find it that interesting. It is fairly uneventful and I found it a bit soporific. (Maybe it would be better as an audiobook.) The writing is good, a few passages in particular, but it was usually not good enough to convey the images to me. (Perhaps because I am unfamiliar with most of the species described. I often searched online for images, but this wasn't enough.) Of course McAnulty himself is very impressive. Before reading this, I hadn't known about his advocacy for climate action.

> Above the bulrushes, a cloud of hoverflies. The light is dappled and sepia. I'm dazzled by the delicacy of the moment. My insides explode, words ricochet outside-in. I hold them close, because capturing this on a page allows me to feel it all over again.

> Autism makes me feel everything more intensely: I don't have a joy filter. When you are different, when you are joyful and exuberant, when you are riding the crest of the wave of the everyday, a lot of people just don't like it. They don't like me. But I don't want to tone down my excitement. Why should I?

> I'm surrounded by five or six fly agaric mushrooms. Like them, I have burst open. I feel more resilient, more powerful. The years of cruel taunts, beatings, exclusion, isolation, helplessness: all the potential for hurt has been eclipsed by meaning and purpose. My life now is all about that. I can't just love the natural world. I have to raise my voice even louder to help it. It's my duty, the duty of all of us, to support and protect nature. Our life support system, our interconnectedness, our interdependence.

> I sit up and turn. Not ten feet away, a kestrel bursts over the top of the sand dunes. I hold it in my gaze where it stays for at least a minute, hovering. I send it a wave of admiration and it replies by holding for a few moments longer, before sweeping elegantly behind the marram grass. I bound upwards with bent body and silent footsteps, but it's gone. I fall back onto the sand, breathless and giddy. A good day. A very good day.