Companions in Wonder Children and Adults Exploring Nature Together

by Dunlap, Julie; Kellert, Stephen R.

• ISBN13: 9780262516907
• ISBN10: 026251690X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2012-02-17
• Publisher: The MIT Press

Summary

Rachel Carson's classic 1956 essay "Help Your Child to Wonder" urged adults to help children experience the "sense of wonder" that comes only from a relationship with nature. It's clear we haven't succeeded in following her advice: eight-year-olds surveyed in the United Kingdom could identify more Pokémon characters than common wildlife species; and Richard Louv's recent best-selling book Last Child in the Woods identifies a "nature deficit disorder" in children around the world. But today a growing number of environmentally minded parents, teachers, and other adults are seeking to restore nature to its rightful place in children's lives. This anthology gathers personal essays recounting adventures great and small with children in the natural world. The authors--writing as parents, teachers, mentors, and former children--describe experiences that range from bird watching to an encounter with an apple butter-loving grizzly bear. Rick Bass captures fireflies with his children and reflects on fatherhood; Michael Branch observes wryly that both gardening and parenting are "disciplines of sustainability"; Lauret Savoy wonders how African American children can connect to the the land after generations of estrangement; and Sandra Steingraber has "the big talk" with her children, not about sex but about global warming. By turns lyrical, comic, and earnest, these writings guide us to closer connections with nature and with the children in our lives, for the good of the planet and our own spiritual and physical well-being.

Author Biography

Julie Dunlap is the author or coauthor of many children's books about nature and the environment, including Louisa May and Mr. Thoreau's Flute and Parks for the People: The Life of Frederick Law Olmsted. Stephen R. Kellert is Tweedy Ordway Professor Emeritus of Social Ecology at Yale University's School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. He is the author of a number of books, including Building for Life: Designing and Understanding the Human-Nature Connection, and the coeditor of Children and Nature: Psychological, Sociocultural, and Evolutionary Investigations (MIT Press).

Table of Contents

Preface	p. xiii
Acknowledments	p. xxi
Introduction	p. 1
The Farm	p. 25
MyChild's First Garden	p. 33
Tracking Our Way	p. 51
Tidal: Subtidal	p. 61
The Toad Not Taken	p. 71
Of the Fittest	p. 81
A New England Childhood	p. 97
Child's Play: Finding the Green in the In-Between	p. 107
The Naturalistic Necessity	p. 113
Children in the Woods	p. 137
Fathers and Sons	p. 141
Moving through the Landscape of Healing	p. 149
Belonging on the Land	p. 155
A Field Guide to Wetern Birds	p. 165
At Home with Belonging	p. 171
Animal Allies	p. 181
Grandmother, Grizzlies, and God	p. 189
Parents without Children: Confessions of a Favorite Uncle	p. 197
Raising silas	p. 205
Grandma's Bawena	p. 213
Mountain Music I	p. 219
Bowl of Stones	p. 231
Colored Memory	p. 237
We Are Distracted	p. 243
The Big Talk	p. 247
On Being "Indian", Unsilent, and Contaminated along the U.S.-Mexico Border	p. 251
The Prophets of Place	p. 259
Huckleberry Country	p. 265
Scorched Earth	p. 271
Children in the River	p. 277
Afterword	p. 289
Credits	p. 295
About the Contributors	p. 299
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