Love Is a Toad
£18.99
Lucy Lapwing grew up ‘playing out’. A woodlouse-collecting, snail-racing, tree-climbing, muddy-footed child, she and her siblings spent more time playing outside than in. Lucy was always intrigued by the natural world, but it wasn’t until she was diagnosed with Hodgkin Lymphoma at the age of twenty-three, that she found what she describes as ‘The Nature Thing’. Over the months of her chemotherapy treatment, she burrowed even further down the nature wormhole, distracting herself by bumbling around nature reserves and greenspaces, snapping photos of any wildlife she found. In her book, ‘Love Is A Toad’, Lucy seeks to explore and celebrate the world around us in all its muddy, messy and beautiful glory.
‘Tender, connected and considered’ – Chris Packham
‘Luminous’ – Freya Bromley
‘Extraordinary’ – Dr Amir Kahn
‘Uplifting, defiant, galvanising’ – Sophie Pavelle
Nature makes us feel things. It sparks awe, curiosity and a sense of beauty and community. But as wildlife around us declines and disappears, murkier feelings rise up: guilt, detachment and fear for nature’s plight. For many years, Lucy Lapwing wrestled with these tangled emotions. So, in an attempt to make sense of this dance between joy and grief, she decided to go on a journey.
In Love Is a Toad, Lucy traverses meadows, bogs and hedgerows with her fellow nature enthusiasts, where she digs down into our relationship with the natural world. Over the course of a year, she meets bucketfuls of wildlife – Blackbird and Oak, slugs and puffballs, waterlilies, Dung Beetles and toads – as she roams across the UK.
From a river swim to wanders through woodlands, with every journey, Lucy explores how nature makes us feel, from wild grief and anger through to soaring joy and indefatigable hope. At once a celebration and an invitation to reflect, Love Is a Toad prods and pokes at our connection to the natural world, exploring its complexity in all its muddiness, messiness and wonder.
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