Nature Study

It is nearly the end of the summer term. Shelf Appeal has been out of education for quite a while now but still thinks of summer holidays, buying new protractor sets from WHSmiths and working through reading lists.

BBC Broadcasts to Schools booklets have featured here, here and here before. They were mostly really nicely designed things from the 1930s to 1960s that accompanied radio programmes. They fittingly earn a place on the shelf due to their often quite lovely illustrations.

Nature Study is a new title to me. Quite a few issues are around and about, mostly showing nature type things in nature type settings. But a few Nature Study covers also had children on them. As per this extremely dapper young ‘boy with crow’ on the cover of the summer 1952 issue. The image is credited to a Scottish Field magazine, a title still exists with that name but it might not be the same thing.

The shows listed for the 1952 summer term were quite exciting, I must say. Animals at Play, Look and Listen, Ants, Jays and Jackdaws, Swallows and Swifts, Monarch of the Glen (for Scottish Schools only), Crabs, Thunder and Lightning, Daddy-long-legs and Nature Quiz. As I don’t do insects I prefer the birds and the fluffier things. Each show has a page or two of photographs and a bit of an introductory text with some starter questions to get young minds working. The images throughout are lovely, printed in a limited, faded palette that just makes them even nicer.

As for our boy, he certainly is dressed appropriate to our cool summers. That sturdy tweed jacket would protect well against claws, too, if one had to consort with – and whistle to – crows.