Diary of a Young Naturalist
By Dara McAnulty
Pages: 222
Ages: 12+
Subject: Memoir, Natural History, Family, Autism, Activism
Publisher: Milkweed Editions
What a stunning book from a young – sixteen-year-old – writer. Dara McAnulty has gained fame not only in his native Northern Ireland but also internationally for his conservation writing and work. A truly gifted crafter of nature prose, this memoir in diary form is a gentle telling of the cycle of the natural world, a special family, and a life in the spotlight.
As a young man passionate about the plight of the living things surrounding him, Dara began a blog that soon catapulted him onto a larger stage among both teen and adult activists. Dara has won many prestigious awards and ambassadorships and was encouraged to expand his blog into a book. Diary of a Young Naturalist pulses with Dara’s intimate relationship with the natural world. This sensitive young man does not just live surrounded by nature, he embodies it in a visceral way that seeps into every word he writes. No matter how profound your relationship with the environment around us, Dara will pull you in deeper.
Dara gives a huge amount of credit for the person he has evolved into to his family, which is extremely close. His father is a conservationist, and his mother has been both a journalist and an academic. Their’s is a family that explores life together, reads poetry aloud in the evenings, cultivates each others’ special gifts, and glories in the small things that make life and people uniquely beautiful.
Diary of a Young Naturalist is also a celebration of autism. Not only Dara but also his mother and two siblings are autistic. This trait is something about which Dara talks openly and is present throughout the book in the way the family interacts with one another and how they deal with changes and stressors in their lives.
I highly, highly recommend this book for all dialectic and rhetoric students, as well as adults. It is a rare chance for students to view the natural world through the eyes of an exceptionally accomplished writer and activist close to their own age. Dara shows young people they can make a difference advocating for things they care about. For those with autism, this is also a book that proves that autism can be a power not an impairment. I loved Dara’s last sentence in his acknowledgments because it illustrates how the thing we are most passionate about can become the thing that carries us down the road of life. Dara writes: “And to nature: my source, roots, beat and thrust. My canopy. My shield and sword.”
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