Diary of a Young Naturalist is a very well-written book by a talented young man. I learned so much about nature and autism though this book. The book is an award winning book and deservingly so. The writing and details are superb! Highly recommend! ( )

Beautiful book. I wished I had an Ireland Bird guide during my time with this book. I was forever "googling" the birds that aren't in the USA. As a nature and Birder, I adored this reading experience. ( )

A beautiful book written by an autistic teenager with a passion for nature. In a diary format it looks through his eyes at the natural world, as well as touching on his mental health and family. Well deserving of the awards it has won, this is a great book for anyone with a similar love of nature, or anyone wanting to understand more about an autistic view of the world.

“I have the heart of a naturalist, the head of a would-be scientist, and bones of someone who is already wearied by the apathy and destruction wielded against the natural world.”

“Skylarks are our Sunday choir as we walk out west, the landscape our place of worship, as it always is.”

Nature became so much more than an escape; it became a life-support system."

Dara McAnulty is a fifteen year old autistic boy from Northern Ireland. He is also brilliant, a dedicated activist, and a budding naturalist. He is also a born writer, in clear evidence here, as he chronicles his life, following the seasons of one year. He has an impressive knowledge of birds but owns a deep devotion to all of nature's wonders, which leads into a fierce retaliation against climate change. The memoir also shines a light on what it means to be autistic, including the brutality of bullying. This is an excellent introduction to Mr. McAnulty and we should be hearing a lot more from this promising young man. ( )

Remarkably tuned-in for a teenage author. Dara writes as if with a sixth sense for the natural world with descriptions that make you see, hear, and even smell things as you go. ( )

Immersive and Poetic Neurodivergent View of Nature
Review of the Little Toller Books hardcover edition (June 2020)

When we (by ‘we’ I mean autistics) get interested in something, most people would call it an ‘obsession’. It really is not an obsession, though. It’s not dangerous, quite the opposite. It’s liberating and essential to the workings of my brain. It calms and soothes: gathering information, finding patterns, sequencing and sorting out is a muscle I must flex. I prefer the word passion. Yes! And it’s absolutely essential that we get to follow our passions. - Excerpt from pg. 130.

In a fast-paced and competitive world, we need to feel grounded. We need to feel the earth and hear birdsong. We need to use our senses to be in the world. Maybe, if we bang our heads against a brick wall for long enough, it will crumble and fall. And maybe the rubble can be used to rebuild something better and more beautiful, enabling our own wildness. Imagine that. - Excerpt from pgs. 199-200.

The above quotes will give some idea of the nature of this book which is structured as a year-long diary by young Northern Ireland naturalist Dara McAnulty. McAnulty has had a passion for nature, ecology and the environment for several years and has drawn attention to those issues in his blog Young Fermanagh Naturalist and his Twitter Naturalist Dara. Diary... documents one annual cycle of his observations during a year in which his family also moved from County Fermanagh to County Down in Northern Ireland.

McAnulty's writings may indeed appear obsessive, especially to a neurotypical reader, but it is their poetic passion which comes through the strongest and makes them universally accessible. Some poems are included as well and each seasonal section is introduced by an italicized prose poem which captures the mood and atmosphere of what is to follow.

The magic of this book is how articulate and expressive McAnulty is for such a young age (he began the book when he was only 13-years-old and recently turned 17 I believe). This has been fostered by his unique family and parents and a self-driven education that divides itself between standard school, expansive reading and a considerable amount of time exploring the outdoors. It was a real pleasure to spend a year in his company.

Trivia and Links
Diary of a Young Naturalist is published by Little Toller Books in the UK, which is “an independent publisher, attuned to writers and artists who seek inventive ways to reconnect us with the natural world and to celebrate the places we live in.” They have a dedicated series of webpages for Dara’s Book. ( )

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. ( )