100 Books Like Wonder

This book helped me release shame after a colleague of mine told me my work wasn’t “science.”

Here’s the truth: to create a healing platform, I needed to tap into ways of thinking that academia sees as “woo woo” and “savage.” I looked to the stars. I meditated. I did rituals and read myths.

Dr. Kimmerer, trained as a traditional botanist, realized that the Indigenous myths and stories she was told as a child contained scientific knowledge passed down for generations by her tribe.

She realized there were scientific truths her community knew for millennia that traditional scientists only discovered within the last 100 years. This is the power of Ancestral Intelligence, disregarded by the same science that ultimately created AI.

What stories, fables, and myths have taught you valuable lessons about the world?

I love this book because it changes the way I see the world every single time.

Powers writes with a patience that feels almost radical. I found myself slowing my breathing as I read, realizing how little I notice in the rush of daily life. I love how he blurs the line between human and nature, reminding me that we’re never outside the system—we are the system.

The Overstory humbles me, and because humility, to me, is where clarity begins.

Written as middle-grade fiction yet loved by readers of all ages, The Last Bear follows main character April and her unlikely best friend – a stranded polar bear – on a journey through the climate-damaged Arctic.

This book was such a joy. I loved learning more about the world’s northernmost settlement and discovering the plight of polar bears in a quickly warming world.

Despite the heavy subject matter, the story was refreshingly hopeful, Gold’s thoughtful writing joining forces with Levi Pinfold’s stunning illustrations to depict a world well worth saving.     

Set in near-future Melbourne, Future Girl offers such a unique and original take on environment and sustainability.

Not many books focus on environmentalism from a food security perspective, so this was a really innovative read. I enjoyed reading about the practicalities of cultivating food crops in intensely urban landscapes, and I loved that the story was accompanied by the author’s own journal-style artwork.

The book also featured a deaf main character, thoughtfully and authentically depicting the disabled experience. 

What I love about this book is the pattern of step-by-step questions posed to the young reader about what kind of dinosaur they would be if certain bones were added or lost to their skeletons, followed by a surprising answer. Not only does this book explore some of the most popular land-walking dinosaurs, it also extends to the first reptiles that flew (Pterosaurs) and others that swam in the seas. My favorite part of this book is that it brings readers to recognize that modern-day avian dinosaurs are still among us—in birds! Along with an ultimate invitation to step into the best place for observing and learning more about them, which is outdoors.

You probably view any connection to nature that you feel as a purely emotional and/or intellectual experience. 

But what if we’re not individuals disconnected from other people and nature, but instead connected to nature and one another by biology and evolution in ways that have powerful implications for our ability to create societies that sustain both us as people and the planet we live on? 

Like all our book picks, this one chimes with our own research – the more we learn about our real place in the world and how our world creates our realities, the better able we’ll be to change the world.

The lyrical and kid-friendly text in this book seamlessly blends information about the natural world in how it looked millions of years ago to a young girl’s journey in deciphering clues about prehistoric life that she found in her own backyard. By showing how Ruth Mason stuck to her desire for unravelling the mystery of the fossilized bones found on her ranch—even though she wasn’t a trained scientist—is a perfect launching pad to instill confidence in kids about their own observational abilities for things that interest them. Another book about perseverance and holding fast to one’s beliefs, A Dinosaur Named Ruth is a winner! 

So often we find popular level dinosaur books with the most ridiculous and inaccurate illustrations. Usually, the fault lies with the middle-man – the children’s writer or the artist. In this book, we have an instance that is, luckily, becoming more common – the academic who has the skills to communicate directly with the general audience. Dr. Witton has the experience of studying fossil animals (pterosaurs are his specialty) and in his book demonstrates how the various aspects of his work command an accurate approach to his artwork (he is a superb artist). Any speculation in his book is based on his sound observations – who would have guessed that the keratinous covering of the horns of Triceratops continued to grow throughout life and so the horny sheaths would have produced weird curly structures like those of elderly sheep?

How can kids not walk away inspired to dig into their own interests after reading this book, especially if they feel like their dreams are out of reach or that they lack the skills to attain them? I love this book for the true life story it shares about a kid who grew up exploring the world around him, while paying attention to the details in a way that led to fascinating dinosaur fossil discoveries—discoveries that started small—with fossilized shells. Jack Horner found passion in hands-on science and persevered, despite dealing with the hardship of severe dyslexia. He also was helpful to me as I wrote my own book and was part of the inspiration behind it. It’s awesome to see such a great book about him.

This is about dinosaurs and other prehistoric beasts, but it’s unique and unusual.

Author Dean Lomax has run to ground some of the most extraordinary fossils ever found, and artist Bob Nicholls turns them into stunning reconstructions. Here you can read about a beetle within a lizard within a snake, a giant beaver that made huge corkscrew burrows 3 meters deep, the mammal that ate dinosaurs, insects caught in the act of mating, and dinosaurs with cancer.

What I like is that, weird and wonderful as each story may be, each is based strictly on the fossils and reasonable interpretations of those fossils. Dinosaurs may spark the imagination, but as scientists, it’s important to show people how we come to our conclusions, and that needs evidence and reason in a discussion.