JUNE 2018

According to that great purveyor of information, the Internet, June has been designated the Great Outdoors Month since 2004.   It certainly is the right time of the year – and for some countries, the only time of the year – to get outside and enjoy nature.

We started our foray into the outdoors last month, attending a magical wedding in beautiful Bali, an island in Indonesia.  It was simply exhilarating to be in a wide open space, golden sand in between our toes, faces upturned to catch the sun’s torrid rays, bodies braced for the massive surge of ocean waves.

The Return to the Wild is a theme explored in our picture book read for the month, Mr Tiger Goes Wild, written and illustrated by Peter Brown.  He explores this theme more deeply in his middle grade masterpiece The Wild Robot (review to follow shortly).  Sometimes the great outdoors holds life-changing potential, as the Amazonian jungles did for Maia in Eva Ibbotson’s imaginative Journey To the River Sea.  Other times, it is life-threatening, as it was for Brian in Gary Paulsen’s thrilling Hatchet, a middle grade story of survival.

However you wish to celebrate the Great Outdoors Month this June, may the road rise to meet you, may the wind be always at your back and may there always be a cold beer in the fridge at the end of a hot day.

Wishing you safe travels,

Maureen, Anna & Ben