DEC BROWNE

Helping to save the planet should be about bringing everyone together, but I've seen far too much environmental awareness raising material with an understandable but divisive 'pick a side' mentality. Forests or cities, animals or vehicles, you know the drill. This book, however, goes for a more nuanced approach. Stop reading here if you don't want a spoiler, but, by the end, the forest and city find themselves in perfect harmony, where the buildings are still there, but they are spaced far enough apart for the plants to thrive and the animals to roam freely. Uno's Garden provides an optimal vision for a sustainable future.

Kid or not, I feel like any fun-loving person with a passion for language will get something out of the quirky crosswords, tales of etymology, word picture puzzles and lists of wacky words and phrases of various types (palindromes, anagrams etc.).