Reading list
Books that have shaped our thinking and our practice — from the science of nature connection to the wisdom of indigenous knowledge, from the neuroscience of play to the urgency of the living world. Buy from independent bookshops where possible.
At the centre of our practice
CENTRAL TO WILD TROUT’S APPROACH
Reconnection: fixing our broken relationship with nature
Prof. Miles Richardson — University of Derby
Richardson’s landmark book traces how our relationship with the natural world became broken — through industrialisation, urban separation, and a culture that values knowledge over feeling — and how restoring that relationship heals both people and the planet. Drawing on decades of empirical research, he shows that wellbeing and pro-environmental behaviour grow together when we learn to feel, rather than simply know, the natural world. The five pathways to nature connection that underpin this book — senses, emotion, beauty, meaning, and compassion — are woven into every session at Wild Trout.
This is the scientific backbone of our work. When a child pauses to feel the texture of bark, or lies back to watch rooks wheel overhead, or helps build a hedgehog home — they are moving through Richardson’s pathways. His research gives language to what we knew in our bodies long before we knew it in our heads.
FOREST SCHOOL & NATURE PEDAGOGY
Forest school
The Essential Guide to Forest School and Nature Pedagogy
Jon Cree & Marina Robb
The definitive guide — from worldview and values to session planning and woodland care. Cree and Robb bring seven decades of combined experience to a book that argues for nature not merely as a setting but as a teacher in its own right. Jon Cree’s voice is woven through Wild Trout’s own handbook.
FOREST SCHOOL
Learning with Nature
Marina Robb, Victoria Mew & Anna Richardson
Over 100 tried-and-tested Forest School activities for children aged 3–16, forwarded by Chris Packham. Practical and beautifully designed, grounded in the understanding that time outdoors lays critical foundations for healthy brain development and emotional regulation.
NATURE & CHILDHOOD
Last Child in the Woods
Richard Louv
The book that coined “nature-deficit disorder.” Louv links a generation’s drift from the outdoors to rising rates of anxiety, depression, and attention difficulties. A clarion call that helped launch an international movement, and still essential reading for anyone asking why this work matters.
NEURODIVERSITY & NATURE
Neurodiversity
Neurodivergent, By Nature: why biodiversity needs neurodiversity
Joe Harkness
BBC Wildlife Best Book of 2025. After receiving an ADHD diagnosis in his thirties, naturalist and writer Joe Harkness set out to understand the deep connection between neurodivergence and the natural world — interviewing neurodivergent people whose relationship with nature shaped their sense of self, their wellbeing, and often their careers. Threading their stories with his own, he makes a compelling case that embracing neurodiversity enriches both our communities and the living world.
Speaks directly to the children Wild Trout works with every week. The natural environment does not ask children to mask, to conform, or to sit still. It meets them exactly where they are.
INDIGENOUS WISDOM
Braiding Sweetgrass
Robin Wall Kimmerer
A botanist and member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation weaves together plant science and indigenous knowledge to make a profound argument: that the natural world is not a resource but a community of beings offering gifts, if we remember how to receive them. Directly connected to Wild Trout’s reciprocal ethos.
LIVING SYSTEMS
Entangled Life
Merlin Sheldrake
A mind-shifting exploration of the fungal kingdom and the Wood Wide Web connecting trees. Sheldrake reveals that living systems are defined not by separation but by relationship — a truth that sits at the very heart of what happens in the woods with children.
NEUROSCIENCE
IntraConnected: MWe (Me + We)
Dr Daniel Siegel
Harvard-trained psychiatrist Daniel Siegel challenges the idea of the separate self — drawing on neuroscience, relational psychology, and indigenous wisdom to show that who we are extends beyond the individual into our relationships, our communities, and the natural world itself.
MENTAL HEALTH
Losing Eden: why our minds need the wild
Lucy Jones
A journalist’s investigation into the growing body of evidence linking contact with the natural world to mental health. Accessible, urgent, and directly relevant to the work Wild Trout does with children experiencing emotional and behavioural difficulties.
PLAY
Play: how it shapes the brain, opens the imagination, and invigorates the soul
Dr Stuart Brown
Drawing on thousands of play histories and decades of research, psychiatrist Stuart Brown makes the scientific case that play is not a luxury but a biological necessity. Essential reading for anyone asking why unstructured, child-led outdoor play is so fundamental to healthy development.
REWILDING, GRIEF & THE MORE-THAN-HUMAN WORLD
More-than-human
Being a Beast
Charles Foster
Foster attempts to live as badger, otter, fox, swift, and deer — dissolving the boundary between human and animal. Funny, strange, and ultimately serious about what it means to truly belong to the more-than-human world. A book that changes how you see every creature in the woodland.