Blue Heart by Nicola Davies

By Nicola Davies (author) , Nicola Davies (illustrator)

"In words and pictures, a powerful, beautiful tribute to whales."

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October 2024 Book of the Month

Many of us won’t be lucky enough to see a whale but Nicola Davies has spent almost her whole life watching them and captures their magnificence for us in this beautifully illustrated collection of poems.

Her whale portraits, in deepest, richest blues and greys, convey the sense of these extraordinary creatures, while her poems are just as vivid, describing memorable whale encounters and whales themselves, different species and some individuals.

One poem encapsulates the struggle to comprehend just how big a blue whale really is, only when ‘I heard the blow/like a door opening in a cathedral/ or a stone dropping down into a cavern that could swallow Paris’ could she make sense of it.

There’s a poem about the thrill of seeing humpbacks for the first time ever; one on the awful catalogue of injuries inflicted on Right whales as they swim through oceans now some of the world's busiest shipping lanes. The poems are joyful, full of awe, or angry, always heartfelt. It’s a book to pore over, to take to your heart and to inspire your dreams.

Whales need our help, it should encourage young people to champion them too.

An educational and entertaining series of poems providing readers an insight into the various species of whale living across the world.

Read the full description

Each species is described through Nicola's poetic responses to encountering them for the first time, accompanied by her own illustrations. Also included are factual notes detailed from Nicola's years of experience working in the natural world.

Nicola Davies is an award-winning author, whose many books for children include The Promise, Tiny, A First Book of Nature and King of the Sky. She has been writing for children for more than 20 years. Underlying all Nicola's writing is the belief that a relationship with nature is essential to every human being, and that now, more than ever, we need to renew that relationship. Her work has been published in more than 10 different languages and has won major awards in the UK, US, France, Italy and Germany. Nicola is the Children’s Laureate Wales 2025-2027.

She is a Zoology graduate, an expert in whales and bats, and has worked for the BBC Natural History Unit. She lives in Powys