The Story of Rachel CarsonIllustrated by: Wendell Minor
Silver Whistle/Harcourt 2003
32 pgs. ages 5-8 930L
Endpapers: Palest blue with white seashells
What a lovely short biography - a perfect read-aloud-in-one-sitting length. And there's lots of wonderful writing to model, even starting at the very beginning What a nice way to set up a story:
"Rachel's house was far from the ocean, hundreds of miles inland at a bend on the Allegheny River in Pennsylvania. There were no seagulls there, no sharks or whales. But one day she found a fossil, a single dark spiral lodged in a rock at her feet. She brought it to show her mother, and they looked it up in a book. The fossil was a sea creture, her mother said. Millions of years ago the ocean had covered their land and left it behind."
Rachel Carson wrote Silent Spring in 1962. It's an expose of all the toxics that are being put into our environment. Most environmentlists feel this book is what started the green/environmental movement. She died of cancer in 1964. She seems like an odd, thoughtful, creative person...and she loved and lived in Maine. I'd like to learn more about her.
Wendell Minor's artwork is stupendous, taking up either a full page or, in two cases, full two-page wordless spreads. They get me homesick for the coast of Maine. Delicious.
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