Fingers in the Sparkle Jar: A Memoir

· Random House
4.7
16 reviews
Ebook
384
Pages
Eligible
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About this ebook

Voted the UK’s Favourite Nature Book

The memoir that inspired Chris Packham's BBC documentary,
Asperger’s and Me

Every minute was magical, every single thing it did was fascinating and everything it didn't do was equally wondrous, and to be sat there, with a Kestrel, a real live Kestrel, my own real live Kestrel on my wrist! I felt like I'd climbed through a hole in heaven's fence.

An introverted, unusual young boy, isolated by his obsessions and a loner at school, Chris Packham only felt at ease in the fields and woods around his suburban home. But when he stole a young Kestrel from its nest, he was about to embark on a friendship that would teach him what it meant to love, and that would change him forever. In his rich, lyrical and emotionally exposing memoir, Chris brings to life his childhood in the 70s, from his bedroom bursting with fox skulls, birds' eggs and sweaty jam jars, to his feral adventures. But pervading his story is the search for freedom, meaning and acceptance in a world that didn’t understand him.

Beautifully wrought, this coming-of-age memoir will be unlike any you've ever read.

Ratings and reviews

4.7
16 reviews
A Google user
August 17, 2016
Lurches from one state of mind to another at quite a pace, hate to use this cliche but I feel the book is probably very honest. Packham writes very well and is never uninteresting. I was surprised by his attitude towards wildlife at a young age, the cheapness of life as valued by a child obsessed with his own experimentation and need to know and catalogue everything. All the more refreshing to read because of this. Would recommend this book to anybody interested in mental health or wildlife. The ongoing bird chapter felt a lot like 'The Goshawk' by T.H. White, which if you like 'Fingers in the sparkle jar' you must read.
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Valerie Hopper
June 28, 2016
Very unusual book found it quite difficult to read however discriptions are very good. I can understand Chris Packham a bit more now.
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A Google user
February 12, 2017
Captivating and heart wrenching. Loved it.
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About the author

TV presenter, photographer and conservationist Chris Packham is one of the nation’s favourite naturalists. He is best known for the BAFTA-winning The Really Wild Show and fronting BBC’s Springwatch and Autumnwatch. Packham is president of the British Trust for Ornithology, Hawk Conservancy Trust, the Hampshire Ornithological Society and the Bat Conservation Trust and vice-president of the RSPB and the Butterfly Conservation. In 2011, he was awarded the British Trust for Ornithology's Dilys Breese Medal for his ‘outstanding work in promoting science to new audiences’, and in 2016 he won the Wildscreen Panda Award for Outstanding Achievement, for his contribution to wildlife filmmaking.

Packham's partner Charlotte Corney owns the Isle of Wight Zoo, and his step-daughter is studying zoology at Liverpool University. He lives in the New Forest.

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