Last Child in the Woods ~ A Book Review

"It is not the language of painters
but the language of nature which
one should listen to...The feeling
for the things themselves. for
reality, is more important than the
feeling for pictures."
~ Vincent Van Gogh

Several weeks ago, Lynne M. gave me a copy of Richard Louv's  Last Child in the Woods:  Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficent Disorder.  It's a mavelous little book that I have been reading over the last several weeks.  Louv discusses the staggering divide between children and the outdoors in our present wired generation.  "Children today are increasingly disconnected from the natural world.  Instead of passing summer months hiking, swimming and telling stories around the campfire, children these days are more likely to attend computer camps or weight-loss camps."  As a result, Louv says "children today have come to think of nature as more of an abstraction than a reality."  He just may very well be right.  A 2002 British study reported that eight year olds could identify Pokemon characters far more easily than they could name "otter, beetle, and oak tree."  But it's not only computers or television or video games that are keeping kids from a hands-on romp in nature, it's also their parent's fear of traffic, strangers, Lyme disease, and West Nile virus; their schools' emphasis on homework and doing well on national testing; their structured schedules; and their lack of access to the natural areas.

In his book, after gathering exhaustive research, Louv argues that nature can offer our children a powerful therapy for such maladies as depression, obesity, and attention deficient disorder. I agree completely with his premise that "direct exposure to nature is essential for healthy childhood development and for the physical and emotional health of children and adults alike" and that's why I deem it important to take my little ones out in the forest just to mess around.  As a child myself, I spent many happy hours "out in the wild" listening to the breeze rustle the oak leaves, watching the muskrats build their homes in the mud of a reservoir, feeling the softness of a moss-covered ground on my fingers, and basking in the sun like an old turtle laying on a log.  These gifts of nature I would like to give to the children I teach and so is it any wonder that when the days are warm and the classroom air is stuffy and confining, we venture out to discover the wonders of the natural world?  Come take a walk with us...and you too, will experience joy.


The children were excited to discover moss in the forest.  We had just read the African folktale, Ananci and the Moss-Covered Rock.  "Hey look...here's some moss!" 


And then of course I had to show them the slippers for a lady.











"A child said What is the grass? fetching
it to me with full hands;
How could I answer the child?  I do not
know what it is any more than he."
~Walt Whitman~

"To trace the history of a river or a raindrop, as John Muir would have done, is also to trace the history of the soul, the history of the mind descending and arising in the body.  In both, we constantly seek and stumble on divinity....
~Gretel Ehrlich~