Little Recommends
Just some things I have been appreciating lately...
Morten Hilmer’s wildlife cameras
Morten is a wildlife photographer with a really informative channel, but his live streams are some of the best and most “natural” of any I’ve seen.
We watched his forest cam regularly on the living room TV over the autumn and winter, but now there is an owl nest cam and I am way too emotionally invested in Frida and Theo and their four eggs.
You can enjoy them here - prepare to see multiple birds (including a sparrowhawk kill caught on the camera!), badgers, foxes, deer, pine martens and more.
Snufkin: Melody of Moominvalley (Switch Edition)
If Moomin adults exist in the same way as Disney or Harry Potter adults do, then I am one. I was raised on Finn Family Moomintroll and the stop-motion TV series which 100% fostered my love of eerie and creepy forest scenes.
This game opens with a cutscene of Snufkin going on his winter adventure set to a track from () by Sigur Ros - hello?? I cried. My husband and I used to nap to that album, when we had the freedom of naps, so it’s already nostalgic. Throw in a beautifully illustrated Moominvalley and the tears were flowing.
I played on Nintendo Switch, perfect for cosy gaming. The game is short but so sweet, with just the right level of mild peril so that my four year old still enjoyed playing with me. She loves the Groke, which helped a lot.
I am hoping for DLC because I was so sad when it was over. Absolute joy.
The Zone of Interest
Nothing could have prepared me for the impact of this film, especially under the lens of active genocide in Gaza. The Zone of Interest shows normal domestic life carrying on merrily on the other side of the wall from Auschwitz, as the family of the camp’s commander ignores the sound of the horrors being perpetrated mere yards away. There is no footage shown from inside the camp, but plenty of evidence of what is going on, and it is all the more powerful for it as a way of demonstrating how people can turn away from atrocities.
Mischief Acts by Zoe Gilbert
It took me a long time to read this, as I find it hard to sit and read these days, and I tend to turn to audiobooks, but I am SO glad I persisted. Mischief Acts is a collection of interwoven tales drawing from the folklore around Herne the Hunter, a topic that interests me anyway, but Zoe’s way of weaving language was so compelling and cleverly structured that I found myself saying “wow” out loud multiple times. The stories span several centuries and into the future which was so exciting as a folklore enthusiast, to see how our tales might survive into an age where mystery is stamped out by surveillance.
Jehane’s Your Creative Gold and Golden Thread
I’ve been working on some new projects as part of my agent Jehane’s Your Creative Gold course, as well as being an Artist Ambassador supporting the course students. So inspiring and an invaluable source of info for illustrators! I’m also working on the Golden Thread challenge, though I didn’t have much time to work on the first theme, I am hoping to get stuck into Heritage Garden, the second theme in the thread.
That’s all for now! Thanks for reading!
A x
I've immediately bought Mischief Acts by Zoe Gilbert 😂 thank you for sharing!