Bermudian author Janet Wingate has launched the second edition of her children’s novel Nonsuch Summer.

Although Ms Wingate currently lives in the Czech Republic with her family, she is currently back on the Island and held a book signing at the Bermuda Bookstore.

The novel was inspired by Ms Wingate’s childhood summers on Nonsuch Island and her conservationist father David Wingate’s work to save Bermuda’s critically endangered national bird, the cahow.

“I wanted to express the fun I had growing up at Nonsuch Island but at the same time I wanted it to be educational,” she said of the book.

The novel describes the “development of Nonsuch Island from nothing to what it is today”.

The mother of four won the Bermuda Government literary prize for teen and young adult books in 2008, an award that reflects the value of her novel. It has since been taught in Bermuda’s schools.

The semi-autobiographical account of the author’s childhood is written from her perspective as a child. Ms Wingate says in her note to readers that it draws on memories and events which took place both before and after the tragic death of her mother following an accident at the Castle Harbour wildlife sanctuary.

The author’s summer childhood home was at Nonsuch, the 14-acre island dubbed the “Living museum of pre-colonial Bermuda” by her now retired father who spent decades restoring its flora and fauna to the state it had been in before permanent settlement in 1612.

The island is heavily wooded and boasted a salt water pond before it was destroyed in Hurricane Fabian a decade ago. Public access to Nonsuch is strictly limited.

The latest edition of Nonsuch Summer boasts a new cover based on an old Christmas card drawn by Janet Wingate’s stepmother, Elizabeth Wingate.

The author dedicated the novel’s first edition to her late mother Anita Wingate and the second edition to her stepmother, giving a “heartfelt thanks for all she did for us growing up”.

The new edition includes up-to-date information on the Bermuda cahow. Since the book was first published in 2005, the endangered petrel — thought to have become extinct in the 17th century and which Dr Wingate helped to rediscover in the 1950s — reached the new milestone of 100 nesting pairs in 2012.

The award winning author credits current Bermuda conservation officer Jeremy Madeiros for the recent boost in numbers. Mr Madeiros took charge of the Cahow Recovery Programme after Dr Wingate’s retirement in 2000.

In the postscript of her novel’s new edition, Ms Wingate details Mr Madeiros’s Translocation Project in which baby cahows are moved to man-made burrows on Nonsuch Island at the point they are ready to leave their mothers.

Ms Wingate expressed excitement about the new edition of Nonsuch Summer.

“I think it has an educational value anywhere because it’s talking about restoring nature,” she said.

“It’s written in a fun way so children can read it and learn something at the same time.”