Companions in Wonder ─ Children and Adults Exploring Nature Together

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

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 Foundations (MIT Press).