Herbal Adventures: Backyard Excursions and Kitchen Creations for Kids and Their Families

Herbal Adventures is a new foraging and wildcrafting guide which presents herbcrafting as a family activity. Released 23rd Oct 2018 by Quarto on their Young Voyageur imprint, it's 176 pages and available in flexibound and ebook formats. Author Rachel Jepson Wolf is a farmer/herbalist/educator and enthusiastic wildcrafter.

There's certainly no lack of herbing and wildcrafting books on the market lately. What distinguishes this one from the pack in my opinion is that it presents wildcrafting as a group learning activity. Children are naturally curious and almost universally enthusiastic learners. Activities picked up in childhood often have lifelong effects. Learning about nature and our natural surroundings, self sufficiency, experimentation, stewardship and responsible use of natural resources are vitally important lessons. This book is a useful tool.

The introduction and get-started chapters represent about 20% of the page content. The next chapters make up an herbal with 10 very common backyard herbs for temperate regions. These include mullein, elderberry, chickweed, yarrow and 6 other no-fail plants. There's also a chapter with a selection of simple, safe herbal recipes for crafting. The book includes a very short resource list and bibliography. There is also a simple index at the back of the book.

This would make a superlative family activity book or a good book for a classroom module for science, with a history tie in.

Five stars, well written, and well photographed.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.