This book review was originally posted to my ko-fi page.
Science - 🔬🔬🔬🔬🔬
Difficulty- 📖
Target Audience - Young Readers
In a sentence? Coyote Peterson shares exactly what is running through his head when on wild, brave adventures to bring nature to the Pack.
---
If you haven't heard of Coyote Peterson's Brave Wilderness channel by now, you're missing out. He and his team of four venture into the great expanse in all forms--hikers, scuba divers, kayakers-- to encounter wild animals and bring them close to the camera and viewer. Ultimately, if Steve Irwin had a YouTube channel, these weekly updates would be everything everyone is watching.
Brave Adventures (2017) is Coyote's first book. An avid reader and Youtube watcher, I had purchased it immediately, prepared to dive in wherever he wanted to take me. The book comprises 10 adventures, which can stand alone if necessary for a reading style. Two of them are exclusive, new tales from when Coyote was a pup, capturing how those young experiences with a snapping turtle and rogue male buffalo shaped who he came to be. The remaining 8 are behind-the-scenes thought processes of Brave Wilderness, where you can find the accompanying episodes for visuals if warranted, although Coyote does an excellent job describing the details of each scene, all while peppering in wildlife facts about the animals.
The book is excellent for all readers, whether it is for your own enjoyment or your offspring's. I highly would recommend it. Easy to digest, finished in two days.
But that's not where I'm going with this blog post. These vignettes were enjoyable but left me wanting to share my own life. I will be the first to admit I have done cool things. I've visited all but 7 states. Three years ago, I completed my SCUBA diving training and have dove in Bonaire. I've visited a handful of countries across the world. But I suppose because it's my own life, it doesn't feel spectacular.
I imagine writing a book like Brave Adventures -- granted, once you have honed and perfected an excellent story-telling voice like he has -- is relatively easy. Of course, it is never easy to pull from the accumulated human experiences stored in the electric pulses of our brains, translating into a decipherable narrative of 50,000 words in a compelling and interesting, yet understandable order. It seems easier than crafting an entire new fictional world in
The catch is you have to have a life worth telling about, and each and every one of us is too humble to see our lives as grand enough to be book-worthy.
You are one human of seven billion. You are experiencing life differently than everyone else in some way, shape, or form. Maybe you also eat Cheerios for breakfast, but you truly have experiences that are unique to you and are worth sharing. Life has so many variables, I want to see your equations.
Reading this book has inspired me to be open, candid, and vulnerable with audiences. Who knows what is worth reading, but I know I have a life worth writing about.
