Emma, I think you and everyone on here not only loves taking photos, but has a talent for it as well.
Emma, the D40 works with non-AF-S lenses too, but you simply would have to do all your focusing manually and have to trust only your eye to tell you that you have the part of the image in focus that you want to have. It's good to know as you may find you like using manual focus all the time (I do for lots of things) and may therefore find a bargain on an older lens. As I found on another site: "While the D40 can use almost any Nikon F-mount lens, it will only support autofocus on AF-S and AF-I lenses". This website shows you the lenses by all manufacturers that will work and autofocus on the D40: https://www.d40-lenses.com/
Another tip: avoid using the B&W mode on your camera; take the shot in colour, then convert it in Photoshop. You not only get a better result thast way, you also get 2 images for the price of 1 since you still have the original colour version.