Studies show that children are
better at identifying Pokémon characters than real animals and plants. Robert
Macfarlane on his quest to reconnect young readers with the natural world
Saturday 30 September
2017 10.00 BST
In August 1913 the children’s
writer Eleanor Farjeon visited the poet Edward Thomas and
his family at their home near the South Downs. On their first walk together,
Thomas’s 11-year-old daughter Bronwen realised that the city-dwelling Farjeon
knew few of the names of the wild flowers that flourished in the surrounding
landscape. “My ignorance,” Farjeon recalled later, “horrified her.”
Remedial work was promptly set.
Bronwen gathered a hundred different flowers and plants, taught Farjeon their
names (“agrimony, mouse-eared-hawkweed, bird’s-foot trefoil … ”), and the next
day sat her down “to a neatly ruled examination paper, with the numbered
specimens laid out in precise order on the table”. Farjeon was given an hour to
complete the test: “60 for a Pass, 70 for Honours.” Her memory was sharp and
she topped 90: “Bronwen was proud of me.” Those flower names would later
blossom in Farjeon’s books for children, which are twined through with natural
lore, notably her chalkland fairy fable, Elsie Piddock Skips in Her Sleep (1937)
and her Martin Pippin stories.
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