Richie's Picks: Great Books for Children and Young Adults

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"The farms of Ohio had been replaced by shopping malls And muzak filled the air from Seneca to Cuyahoga Falls." -- The Pretenders, "My City was Gone"

"As Wangari Maathai tells it, when she was growing up on a farm in the hills of central Kenya, the earth was clothed in its dress of green.
"Fig trees, olive trees, crotons, and flame trees covered the land, and fish filled the pure waters of the streams.
"The fig tree was sacred then, and Wangari knew not to disturb it, not even to carry its fallen branches home for firewood. In the stream near her homestead where she went to collect water for her mother, she played with glistening frogs' eggs, trying to gather them like beads into necklaces, though they slipped through her fingers back into clear water."

But in the early 1960s Wangari Maathai left Kenya for five years in order to attend college in Kansas. It was during that time that Kenya gained independence from Britain. And in the manner with which Claire Nivola tells and illustrates the story, Wangari's return to Kenya reminds me of the old Pretenders' song. For there had been numerous and radical changes in the landscape of Kenya during Wangari's absence:

"Wangari found the fig tree cut down, the little stream dried up, and no traces of frogs, tadpoles, or the silvery beads of eggs...Wangari noticed that the people no longer grew what they ate but bought food from stores. The store food was expensive, and the little they could afford was not as good for them as what they had grown themselves, so that children, even grownups, were weaker and often sickly."

Meanwhile, the cutting of the remaining forests for wood to burn as fuel led to widespread erosion and the degradation of streams and rivers.

And so it was that Wangari Maathai came up with her "simple and big idea" of getting tens, then hundreds, then thousands of Kenyans to grow and plant trees. Her idea evolved into the Greenbelt Movement and, in the long run, led to her winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004.

Claire Nivola's watercolor paintings climax with a two page spread in which an endless stream of Kenyans carrying seedlings are seen traversing the mountains to a hillside where the forest is being restored meter by meter.

The story is followed by an extensive Author's Note which includes information about Wangari putting her body on the line in recent years to fight ill-conceived government schemes.

At a time when I am so often distraught due to the seemingly inevitable deterioration of the planet I am leaving my children, it is inspiring to read a book that so well illustrates how one person's singular vision, determination, and leadership can radically (and literally) transform the landscape.

Richie Partington, MLIS
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