My Y. A. Picture Book Challenge Round Up

Non Fiction Picture Book Challenge is hosted by Kid Lit Frenzy

It's Monday! What Are You Reading  is hosted by Teach Mentor Texts

Non Fiction Monday is hosted by Wendie's Wanderings

My stack of Y A picture books included tow new title about the environment, which made the conservationist in me quite happy to see among the bookshelves in the first place:

 

     My interest in Thomas Yezerski's Meadowlands : A Wetlands Survival Story   is rather personal; after all, I live in New Jersey and pass through the Meadowlands on my way to New York City so often.  Formed where the Hakensack River and Passaic Rivers empties into Newark Bay, this area of wetlands once covered 20,00 acres of land and was home to a thriving ecosystem that included many species of plants and animals.  The Lenni Lenape tribe lived here , too - until the Dutch arrived, the first wave of explorers and settlers to begin the process of  "improving" the marshes and depleting its natural resources. By 1985, highways and factories and full scale dumping of toxic chemicals had shrunk the Meadowlands to less than 7,000 acres of a polluted,  debris-strewn area where little could thrive.

     Through clearly written and beautifully illustrated text, Yezerski tells the story of it's slow but steady revival (once the state of New Jersey realized that "the Meadowlands had deteriorated into one of the worst places in America, and was giving New Jersey a bad reputation").  Each positive step by man was rewarded by nature herself - slowly plants and fish and birds began to return and thrive once again.  By July of 2007, "for the first time in fifty years, a young osprey - a bird of prey-leaped out and took flight from a nest its parents had built in the Meadowlands." 

     This was an inspiring story to read; I loved the way the author captured all the season's of the Meadowland's life - from its pristine beginnings to its most polluted to the way it looks today.  I know my students will be interested in reading about this natural miracle taking place just at our doorstep.  There is also an interesting interview with the author here.

 Along the same lines of ecosystems and the importance of conservation, is Allan Drummond's Energy Island: How one Community Harnessed the Wind and Changed Their World.

      Drummond's illustrations, as always, are just a joy to view.  In this case, they are the perfect vehicle to help tell the remarkable story of the Danish island of Samso - in the middle of Denmark and in the middle of the sea, it is blessed with many wonderful things, including a strong and steady wind.   A science teacher by the name of Soren Hermansen  was selected by the Danish Ministry of Environment and Energy to lead an energy independence project based in Samso.

     After much thinking and debating and thinking some more, the town turns to wind turbines,and soon achieves its goal - energy independence!

Drummond concludes his inspiring story this way:

"And what can you do to make a difference on your island?

What's that? You don't live on an island?

Well, maybe you  think you  don't live on an island but actually you do. We all do.

We're all islanders on the biggest island of them all-planet Earth.  So it's up to us to figure out how to save it."

     Indeed.  I appreciated the way Drummond included more detailed information along side panels throughout the book - for instance, did you know that windmills were first invented 1,00 years ago by the Persians in order to grind corn and pump water?  Readers can learn how turbines are built and what causes the greenhouse effect, even as they follow the story of how one little town in Denmark took on and solved such a huge challenge.

I also read  Pablo Neruda: Poet of the People, written by Monica Brown and illustrated by Julie Paschkis.  Myra at Gathering Books had just blogged about this, and I was hooked (partly by the rich illustrations, and partly because I love Neruda). 

What is not to love about a boy "who loved wild things wildly and quiet things quietly" and who becomes a man "heard across nations and oceans", whose "poems grew flowers of hope and dreams of peace?"  This one is a keeper for my poetry section - I can see introducing Neruda with this book and its stunning illustrations.

Finally, I'd like to share Walking Home to Rosie Lee, written by A. LaFaye and illustrated by Keith Shepherd.

      The Civil War has ended, and while everyone around him is busy "getting the feel for freedom," young Game sets out to find his mother.  His journey takes him many months of weary travel, with nothing but the dream of seeing his mother again to keep him going.  Everywhere he finds himself he asks for his mama, his Rosie Lee.  And his tenacity pays off...he discovers her at last, and they pray for "all those boys like me searching for their mamas who be searching for them."

      In her afterword, the author writes that she "wrote 'Walking Home to Rosie Lee' to celebrate the strength, love, and determination it took for families to find each other at the end of the Civil War.  I also wrote it to start filling the gap in children's literature that should be overflowing with a wide variety of such stories."  She's right, of course, this IS a gap in YA lit, as least as far as I know.  Although it is book better suited to the elementary grades, "Walking Home to Rosie Lee" is a title I may refer my kids to as a starting point for an inquiry circle, perhaps.  It will definitely get them interested  in and moved by the topic.