Books like Understanding Forests — picked by fans

I’ve been fascinated with forests ever since running wild as a kid in the Appalachian woods of Pennsylvania. Now living at the edge of the Pacific in the Coast Range in Oregon, I’ve engaged with a host of forest issues involving watershed health, wilderness protection, fire management, and fish. Among the 30 books I’ve written, three are germane here: Trees and Forests of America, Twilight or the Hemlocks and Beeches, and America’s Great Forest Trails. I’m always learning more by reading everything I find about forests. For my afternoon break and exercise I typically work on my own 8-acre wooded parcel where I maintain trails, eradicate exotic invaders, and restore native trees.  

When I was young, I used to ask every new person I met if they believed in magic. No caveats, no explanation of what I meant by that. Their response – generally either an unequivocal no, a tentative what does that mean, or a delighted yes, cemented the direction of our relationship.

One of my favorite quotes is Yeats’ statement that “the world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.” This conviction fuels my writing and my life. Whatever genre I write is informed first by magic, and there is no higher form of magic than the natural world and the science that explores it.

My interest in women in science started 18 years ago, when I became a tenure-track assistant professor. I began to experience the difficulties of being a woman in science in my new position. I knew there must be a reason for it. I read everything I could find on the role of women, not just in science but in society. I’ve been reading and writing about it since then, and while some progress has been made, there’s still a long way to go. The books on this list are a good start, giving readers a sense of how long women have been fighting for equality and what we can do to move things forward. 

I’ve been fascinated with forests ever since running wild as a kid in the Appalachian woods of Pennsylvania. Now living at the edge of the Pacific in the Coast Range in Oregon, I’ve engaged with a host of forest issues involving watershed health, wilderness protection, fire management, and fish. Among the 30 books I’ve written, three are germane here: Trees and Forests of America, Twilight or the Hemlocks and Beeches, and America’s Great Forest Trails. I’m always learning more by reading everything I find about forests. For my afternoon break and exercise I typically work on my own 8-acre wooded parcel where I maintain trails, eradicate exotic invaders, and restore native trees.  

I was brought up in a farming landscape; the little patches of woodland were exciting because they were different, full of birds and flowers not seen elsewhere. This led to me wanting to be a forester, and hence my undergraduate degree, post-graduate research, and subsequent career with the conservation agencies in Britain. I enjoyed working with colleagues on issues as varied as how to select and manage woodland reserves, to what the government should be doing in its reviews of national forest policy. Now retired, I still spend time following the changes in the woodland flora and trying to encourage others to conserve and expand our native woodland.

I grew up in a family of nature lovers and went with my parents and my brother on numerous nature hikes. These are my most precious childhood memories. I learned as a child to appreciate nature, I was fascinated by wild animals and inspired by the beauty of the natural world. As I grew up, I became more and more aware of how fragile the natural world is today and how important it is to protect it. This is one of the main motivators for me to create books for kids that will inspire them to love and respect nature.

As a child, I enjoyed a special relationship with an oak tree in my backyard. My father indulged my love of nature with backpacking trips in the mountains of California. In my teens, he published my booklet on edible wild plants. My maternal grandmother encouraged my interest in Indigenous uses of plants with books, field trips, and stories from her anthropology studies at UC Berkeley. My mother cultivated my creativity with ferocious intensity and supported my desire to earn a Ph.D. I landed my dream job at an alternative, interdisciplinary, small, public liberal arts college and have taught botany there for nearly 30 years. I love teaching plant-centric environmental history.

I love our planet. That’s the long and short of it. I have stretched belly-down upon the earth and hugged this whole world as if it is an extension of myself, or I am an extension of it. We are one, as I think we all are, with this world that is our home. After receiving my Master's in Nature Study and Environmental Education, I taught grade school for many years, spending as much time outside with the students as I could. At the same time, I have been writing stories and loving nature, loving our world, and working on stewardship. Eco-fantasy is a genre that just seems natural to this mission. 

I've been the resident playwright at First Stage Children’s Theater in Milwaukee for over twenty years. I began my career by adapting classic titles for the stage: Little House Christmas, Treasure Island, Huck Finn, Through the Looking Glass, Tom Sawyer. As I researched previous adaptions of these novels, I discovered how so many of them were quite different from the author’s original intentions. I don’t feel these adaptations are 'bad,' by any means—in fact, I believe you have to break free of a novel to truly adapt it for a different medium—but often the 'adaptation' is the only part of the story that gets passed down to us. 

I come from a family of some of the earliest big-game hunters turned conservationists of India and grew up treading jungles with my naturalist father. As a child, I was often found trying to catch a snake or spin a yarn or reading from the collection of wildlife and natural history books at home. Jungles were as much a part of growing up as was going to school, and I learnt precious life lessons from them. To pursue the cause of conservation, I’ve written several fiction and non-fiction books, as well as articles in national dailies/magazines on wildlife and nature, and I was appointed the Honorary Wildlife Warden of Udaipur, India.