We organised a family walk at Borthwood Copse, IOW today, to celebrate the launch of our autumn children’s book called Jack and Boo’s Wild Wood. The day was perfect, a sunny crisp autumn day, leaves turning golden and red, and crunchy scattered all around. I set up shop half hour before the start on a flowery fold-up chair (very me) and a pile of books to my side. I felt a little conspicuous at first, but soon got into the flow of chatting to people out on their regular Sunday walk, and within half an hour I’d sold 3 books.

As the day progressed I regularly got to give out scavenger hunts and maps to families with children, some being regulars to the wood, others pleased to have discovered the wood for the first time, and many saying they’ll come back to walk again. I sold 2 more books, making a grand total of 5 – not enough to retire on, but certainly more than I expected for a small outdoor event.

It was great to hear people walking out of the wood reporting back on tales of seeing families walking around with the scavenger hunts picking up acorns and beech masts and spotting red squirrels. I also got a few leads for future events working with children and the Isle of Wight County Press photographer turned up for a photo shoot with our children in the wood, so we are hoping for some great publicity in the next paper if we’re lucky.

I’d like to thank the senior and local warden of the Isle of Wight National Trust for letting me do the event at Borthwood Copse, to the local paper and all the people who helped promote the event and who came along today.

We will be arranging a companion walk to this one, next spring, in Borthwood Copse, when the wood will be full of drifts of bluebells, and also look out for more Beachy Book walks coming in the future.

“Jack and Boo’s Wild Wood lays down a lovely list of things for children to do in the real world of nature. I urge you to read it and then let them enact it for themselves. Only then will we have future generations who will love wildlife enough to protect it.”

Chris Packham – Naturalist and BBC broadcaster.

To celebrate the launch of Beachy Book’s second children’s book, Jack and Boo’s Wild Wood, Island author and award winning publishers, Philip and Eleanor Bell, are inviting families and children (or anybody who loves a walk) to a free wild walk and scavenger hunt in Borthwood Copse, one of the Island’s most ancient areas of woodland, owned and managed by The National Trust.

The event takes place on Sunday 23rd October, between 12 and 3pm, at Borthwood Copse, Alverstone Road, Apse Heath, off the A3056 Newport-Sandown road. There is a small Parish Council carpark near on the Alverstone road. Also No. 8 bus stop outside the Borthwood entrance.

The family walk is about a mile long, can be done at your own pace and is suitable for young children accompanied by adults. The paths around the wood may be muddy so bring wellies if you need them. Philip will be at the main entrance to Borthwood (on Alverstone road) to meet you and give you a wild wood scavenger hunt and map, which, if completed and returned to him, offers £1 off the purchase price of a signed and personalised copy of Jack and Boo’s Wild Wood. Beachy Books will be donating £1 from the sale of each book to help The National Trust’s Borthwood Copse conservation work.

Jack and Boo’s Wild Wood contains photographs taken in Borthwood Copse and the adventure was inspired by the authors’ own family walks with their two children. Philip Bell says, “Our children can be reluctant walkers at times, but when we get them out on a woodland walk they have a real adventure full of imagination, nature spotting and scavenging. And in autumn, when the leaves are turning golden and red, the wood looks gorgeous.”

Following on from their first award winning children’s book, Jack and Boo’s Wild Wood is set in an ancient wild wood. Under canopy of trees they forage like squirrels from spring to autumn, for new shoots and summer fruit, windfall seeds and fallen leaves. Climbing logs, jumping roots, avoiding woodland trolls, spotting butterflies, listening to cuckoos and woodpeckers, counting ducks and even finding a secret swing deep in the woods. The book is both part story and part nature spotter guide, with real photographs taken in some of the Island’s most beautiful woods, including Borthwood Copse.

Jack and Boo’s Wild Wood is priced at £5.99 (ISBN: 9780956298010) and can be ordered direct from the publisher, or purchased at Waterstone’s in Newport, Made On The IOW or ordered via Amazon and other online retailers and bookshops.

I’ve been in the laboratory for a few weeks rewriting our website – well customising a wordpress blog, which has caused it’s own set of extra coding problems and, at times, led me to utter distraction. Anyway, I thought it’s time to air it publicly and consider it a work-in-progress. If you’ve seen our previous site, you’ll not notice a massive change in branding, colours or layout, so what has changed?

Over the past few months I’ve noticed, mostly through using Twitter and social networks, that people are increasingly accessing the web from iPhones, iPads and other smart phone devices. When I viewed the old website on a mobile it looked dreadful – you had to scroll all over the place and zoom in. I hope my changes have now addressed this and this new website should shrink to fit, so to speak.

The other main change is at the top of the site, you’ll hopefully see a nice page-flippable Beachy Books catalogue so you can scroll through all our books (2 so far, with 1 more coming at Christmas. OK, it’s not loads but what do you want, blood?). I could have knocked this out in Flash, a bit like I use for my book previews, but devices with little ‘i’s in their names, iPads, iPhones, etc, in their wisdom, don’t run Adobe Flash. I hope my solution provides a universal book catalogue that should work across devices. I admit, on a small screen, you may need to still zoom in to see the detail.

UPDATE: I’ve temporarily disabled this “flipping” book at the top as, ironically enough, causing problems on iPhones and some other phones. Hey ho, back to the drawing board.

Anyway, I’d appreciate your feedback, especially those with smart phones, tablets, etc. As I say, it’s not set in stone so I can tweak it as we go.

UPDATE – Known Issues:

On mobile devices (and narrow screen displays) there’s a gap that appears under the “flipping” book catalogue at the top and the main menu. Yes, this is annoying and crap of me. This is one of the bugs I have yet to fix. If anybody can fix it I’ll give them a free Jack and Boo book.