“The Big World of Tiny Fungi” is an introduction to the smaller ascomycetes, diminutive species that aren’t much use as food for the belly, as morels are, but their beauty could be considered food for the soul. Though many are so small you either need the eyes of an eight-year-old or a hand lens to see them, most are decomposers so once you start looking you can find them almost anywhere – on logs and twigs, on soil and leaves, on needles and nuts, on grasses and moss, and – thank goodness or we’d be buried in it! – on dung.

Jan Thornhill has been studying the amazing fungi she finds around her home in southeastern Ontario (Canada) for more than 30 years. Though she is not beyond eating the choice ones, she is much more interested in fungal diversity, ecology, and collecting the weird and wonderful, all of which she obsessively photographs, catalogues, and vouchers. She also sometimes writes about her favorite oddities on her blog: https://weirdandwonderfulwildmushrooms.blogspot.ca.

Professionally, Jan is a multi-award-winning writer and illustrator of science- and nature-based children’s books. Her most recent title is The Triumphant Tale of the House Sparrow, a companion volume to The Tragic Tale of the Great Auk. She lives in the woods near Havelock, ON.