Review - The Incredibly Truthful Diary Of Nature Girl by J.D. Shelby
Preamble
J.D. Shelby’s The Incredibly Truthful Diary Of Nature Girl is a bit of a change of pace in terms of the things I normally read and review. Refreshing, I would say. This is a children’s book aged at six to twelve year olds, at least according to the Amazon page, so I may very well end up reading it to my daughter before too long.
A note about my reviews: I consider myself an appreciator, not a critic. I know first-hand what goes into the creation of art – the blood, the sweat, the tears, the risk. I also know that art appreciation is subjective and lernt good what mama tell’t me – if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all. I’m not a school marm grading a spelling test – I’m a reader who enjoys reading. If a book is entertaining, well-written, and I get absorbed into it, five out of five. It’s either five stars or nothing these days – if I don’t like it, no review. Regardless, I wouldn’t even put a star rating system on my reviews but for the reality of storefronts like Amazon.
Take from that what you will.
Review – 5/5
My Side Of The Mountain by Jean Craighead George was one of my favourite books growing up. I must have read the dog-eared family copy at least a dozen times over the years I spent at my parents’ home. There was something about that concept – a kid running away from the city to live as a mountain man in the hollowed-out heart of a tree – that resonated with me.
J.D. Shelby’s The Incredibly Truthful Diary Of Nature Girl is very much in the same vein – full of stories of the plants and animals of the forest – except that Nature Girl is living in the woods with her parents from the get go. She’s no city-dweller making her escape – she lives and breathes the forest and goes back to a ‘normal home’ at night.
There’s an educational element to the story, as there was in My Side Of The Mountain, but I would say this one is primarily in homage of wonder, whimsy, and the Stately King Of Firs. How did J.D. Shelby give a tree enough of a personality that I actually cared what happened to him as if her were a person? She’s clearly been conspiring with ents and I for one welcome our bark-enveloped overlords.
An innocence suffuses the text, an innocence that children possess and that adults tend to lose as we get older. Baudelaire said that ‘genius is no more than childhood recaptured at will,’ and it is plainly obvious that Shelby has done the genius thing here. I felt like a kid whilst reading the book, which is not exactly the norm for the children’s books I have read with my daughter. With many, you can tell it’s an adult playing at being a kid.
Shelby must still be a kid herself, and it shows.
Check it out on the ‘zon here.