From award-winning poet Aimee Nezhukumatathil comes a debut collection of essays about the natural world, and the way its inhabitants can teach, support, and inspire us. As a child, Nezhukumatathil called many places home: the grounds of a Kansas mental institution, where her Filipina mother was a doctor; the open skies and tall mountains of Arizona, where she hiked with her Indian father; and the chillier climes of western New York and Ohio. But no matter where she was transplanted—no matter how awkward the fit or forbidding the landscape—she was able to turn to our world’s fierce and funny creatures for guidance. Not every book requires pictures, clearly. One of the pleasures of reading a novel is to create the visuals of the world in your own mind. But in nonfiction, there is something wonderful about cracking open a great big coffee table book full of rich illustrations. The illustrations can fill in gaps that words just can’t reach. I have kept A Gap in Nature, a book that includes a spread on every animal that went extinct from 1492 (a date the authors see as the beginning of western expansion and impact on global ecosystems) and the publication of the book in 2001, on my coffee table for years. Part of the book’s creation process involved illustrator Peter Schouten creating life-size paintings of each extinct animal, which were then included in the book with Tim Flannery’s descriptions. While Flannery gives context for the lives — and deaths — of each of these animals, the illustrations are what bring them to life. You can read about a dodo, but you can also see their soft feathers ruffle and look at the gentle curve of their goofy beak. The illustrations offer a more immersive experience than just words alone. Below I’ve rounded up several of my favorite illustrated works of nonfiction for grownups. I think these books are greatly improved by their gorgeous illustrations, even Belle would have to agree.
