I was quite pleased to see that the BBC has made a new movie based on Gerald Durrell's wonderful book, My Family and Other Animals. It will run on Masterpiece Theater on April 9th - check PBS to see what time your part of the world.

I'm a huge fan of Durrell's. I wrote about him for Eclectica last year and I'm always looking for copies of his old books (some admittedly are better than others). He was just such an engaging and friendly writer and was so in love with the natural world. He makes you want to chuck everything and go around the world looking for endangered species. I often wonder why we don't all just do something like that (we think we can't - we think we have all these other committments but really what keeps us chained to dull lives but fear of living an exciting life?). I'm reading a great book by a marine biologist right now that competely seems like Durrell underwater. Because I'm reading it for Booklist I can't go into any detail (not until the review runs) but it's a charmer and I'm looking forward to writing a much longer review here later.

Finding well written and readable natural history books is not all that easy. I'm an amateur naturalist - don't know specifically much about anything but love Animal Planet - so I read these books to learn, but I don't want to be bored. It's a fine line to walk but Durrell was really a master at it. Another reason to watch the movie (and read his books) is found in the new study about kids and the outside world - Last Child in the Woods. This one mentions lots of studies conducted in the past few years about the impact on the current generation of kids of a life led primarily inside. In our own neighborhood (and practically everywhere else) you can't put a basketball net up over the garage or build any kind of treehouse. I wonder why the rules have evolved this way - when did basketball nets become a sign of urban blight?

It's all very confusing but interesting to read. It makes me long to runaway to Corfu like the Durrells did in 1935. I imagine now young Gerald would be forced into school though and told that he was going to become a failure if he didn't learn his multiplication tables by heart and the vital dates in British history. Outside is just for playtime - carefully controlled and monitored and limited playtime. We need to focus on reading and math above everything else don't we? They are what matters in life, apparently, and nothing else even comes close.

Watch the movie, then raise a basketball net in protest.