海角大神

What鈥檚 a common thread shared by 鈥淧eter Rabbit鈥� and 鈥淟ord of the Rings,鈥� 鈥淗arry Potter鈥� and 鈥淐alvin and Hobbes,鈥� 鈥淭he Lorax鈥� and 鈥淭he Little Prince,鈥� and 鈥淲here the Wild Things Are鈥�? All these classics 鈥� along with vast swaths of children鈥檚 literature 鈥� have environmental themes.聽

So argues Liam Heneghan, co-director of the Institute for Nature and Culture at DePaul University in Chicago, in his new book 鈥淏easts at Bedtime,鈥� in which he reflects on the animals, forests, and pastoral scenes that populate many beloved children鈥檚 books. The genesis of his book came when he was cleaning out his children鈥檚 bookshelves. 鈥淚t wasn鈥檛 until I systematically inspected these books that I really understood how much environmental content there was,鈥� says Mr. Heneghan.聽

What started as a Saturday-morning project became a years-long investigation, one he hopes becomes a guide for sharing the joys of literature with children. Here, condensed for brevity, are some of his reflections.

Q:聽Why are environmental themes so prevalent in children鈥檚 books?

A lot of the writers of our classic children鈥檚 literature and more contemporary works of children鈥檚 fiction ... had a naturalist鈥檚 inclination toward wild things. Beatrix Potter was one of the big rediscoveries for me. She was an accomplished mycologist, had written about fungal reproduction, and had a paper presented to the Royal Linnean Society, but being a woman was not allowed to attend that august society nor encouraged in her interests, and she turned her zeal for natural history to her art and writing.

[J.R.R.] Tolkien had a lifelong concern about the fate of trees and the fate of forests. It got so bad he would rarely visit a natural area because he suspected it would have been destroyed. So what he鈥檚 doing on the page with the 鈥淟ord of the Rings鈥� books is mapping out these concerns.聽

My intuition is that there is an environmental flavor to this literature because there was an environmental flavor to the writers of this literature.聽

Q:聽How does reading fit into the broader message that kids don鈥檛 get outside?

I don鈥檛 want to be understood as haughtily dismissing the advances of the last 15 or 20 years of environmental education, which is coaxing kids from the soft comforts of home to get outside. But we should be thinking about ways of transforming the indoors, particularly the reflective component of it.聽

It is worth our while pausing to think about the ways in which we can enhance the quality of children鈥檚 reflective lives.

Q:聽What books have resonated with you?

Some of my old favorites endured. The first book I remember owning was a copy of 鈥淭he Hobbit.鈥� All of the Tolkien stuff still resonates. Some things I reevaluated. 鈥淭he聽Lorax鈥� had been something that I found聽very important and still do, but now for very different reasons. I used to think the Lorax himself was the hero. Now I wonder whether Dr. Seuss was presenting us with the Once-ler as the hero. The Lorax epitomizes the figure of the hectoring, browbeating, generally failing approach to environmental policy, and the system ends up completely destroyed despite his fulminating against聽the Once-ler. The only expressions about the beauty of the system are when the Once-ler is thinking back to the first time he encountered the truffula forest, and he鈥檚 the one that ultimately hands over the seed of the truffula tree to the little kid with the idea that this is a system that could be restored. So it becomes to me a heartbreakingly optimistic story at the same time as being an anatomy of a system falling apart.

Q:聽Why do you think most adults feel so disconnected from nature?

I coined this term: toponesia. I think what happens is that as you turn toward adult concerns in your life ... there is a kind of forgetfulness about the importance of place to us.

Also, kids are being served up these extraordinary treasures with this abundance of environmental information, but unless there is somebody with them that can help illuminate some of these themes, maybe the full implications of them aren鈥檛 apparent to us as we read them.聽