Lynne Cherry had a hard time getting The Great Kapock Tree published. Publishers saw it as a risk book and their rejections ran from "too issue-oriented" to "it wouldn't interest people." Destruction of habitat threatens in Lynn Cherry's The Great Kapok Tree: A Tale of the Amazon Rain Forest (HBJ, $14.95). When a man enters to cut down a giant Kapok tree he is lulled to sleep by the heat and hum of the forest. As if in a dream he is visited by creatures large and small who educate him about what is at risk by the damage he intends. Sense of community, interdependency, oxygenation, and harmony are some of the balances that are made precarious by his intention. Finally a Yansmamo Indian child asks the man to wake and see the forest with new eyes. The man does so, sees the beauty and leaves the forest, dropping his ax on the way. Ages 3-8. (HBJ, 1990)
The best-selling Great Kapock Tree is now in its 8th printing, has sold over 200,000 copies. It was published in 1990, the 20th anniversary of Earth Day, and things came togther--there was documentation to prove what scientist had feared for years, people's concern was activated and the book took off, publishers realized that there was interest, and the blockbuster touched off a whole genre of children's books. And when there's one blockbuster everyone tries to do other books--others started coming out. Stirring people into action is what Lynne Cherry does best.
Lynne Cherry grew up loving nature, drawing and witing. It's no wonder then all three support her books in reaching right into the hearts of children and adults. She defines an enviromentalist as "I'm a person who has a respect for nature and sort of a deeper sense of what our human inner relationship with nature is and that's somehting that's evolved. Loving nature is a life-long process that begins when you're a child."
"When I was growing up one of the most traumatic events in my childhood was when the woods where I used to spend every waking hour was bulldozed and it never even dawned on me that there that I could possibly organize the community and that I could contest development."
Her latest book, The River Ran Wild, is a documentation of how one woman, Marion Stoddart, organized her community to rescue the proud Nashua River." Lynne Cherry builds compassion for the Nashua, by historical refelection,and the river becomes a protagonist that readers care about. Her detailed pictures offer a full page spread counterpoints of early glory where the Nashua runs clear amid a landscape of lush forests and respectful Native Americans to firey orange waters set against a polluting mills. Sadness is expressed by spirits who once loved it until people join forces to return it to its former beauty.
Cherry's books are welcomed by parents and educators alike and she continually learns that her books are making a difference. Students who were reading The River Ran Wild, noting a similar playground pollution, had an encouraging teacher who cancelled classes to follow the river to a factory that was responsible for the orange waters. When the factory owner didn't respond to thirty, tired muddy kids, the teacher went back with the EPA to get the orange foam stopped. "That's real education, " remarks Cherry, "Learning to be part of the system, have control over your life, and over your world."
Though Cherry's work is ecological based, it's also teaching "participatory decmocracy". Unlike the powerlessness she felt, she wants children to know that they can become active, they can become involved in the process, contest governmental decisions, they are esentially supposed to be the government and unless the people really speak out it won't be a democracy anymore."
Cherry, never one to just talk about principles, puts her ideas into practice by directing the Center for Children's Environmental Literature (Smithsonian Environmental Research Center) (SERC, PO Box 28, Edgewater, MD 21037) which she established in 1992. The Center unites other well-known writers and illustrators and publishing companies to devote themselves to the issue. Teaches teachers how to teach through participatory workshops. She publishes Nature's Course, a newsletter about environmental successes in the world and in books. Nature's Course is also sent on ECONET so that the information becomes a part of a global computer system.
Cherry also visits schools and talks about enviromental issues with strong images that have rocked her reality. Teachers are always shocked that no one makes a peep during her talks. Cherry collects and passes on information that is kid-relevant. She tells about Australia kids who have to wear hats and scarves every day to limit their exposure to the sun because they're underneath the ozone hole. She talks about complex ideas like the fragility of the planet by telling kids that if they drove a half an hour straight up,15 miles, they'd be out of the atmosphere.
In books, talks and in the newsletter, Cherry is careful to balance teaching without preaching, and informing without overwhelming. "I show people who have made a difference, who have had successes in effecting their natural world. You can make a difference. Never, never, never is this a hopeless situation. The info I have to communicate is scary and it gets me depressed sometimes."
She also alternates the kinds of books she writes. She'll do a book that informs and then one like Archie Follow Me (Dial, $12.95 ) that just "revels in nature." Archie Follow Me was written when Cherry was eight years old and traces the paths of a little girl and her beloved cat who romp through thick wild-flower strewn woods observing animals and exploring.
Cherry writes the kinds of books she liked as a child, "books that were a story that left me with a powerful emotional feeling." She feels that if she reaches a child's heart and touches their imagination, she can lead them to empowerment and action. Her books are a unity of science, emotion and spirituality. "Until recently I just did what I did unconsciously. Each [book] has profound respect for a child's interpretive powers, entering issues through the back door."
A River Ran Wild, for example, uses the vehicle of history to compare the profound effects of Indian and Colonial world views. Indians condisered themselves part of nature while the Colonists thought of nature as something to conquer or commodities to profit. It's such a different world view. It dawned on Lynne Cherry that this view has followed us through the decades, led us to the world's environmental degredation. "We don't think of ourselves as part of the whole system." Presenting these disparate visions, Cherry leaves kids room to come to their own conclusion. When she shares this in schools there is a poignant silence that leads her to believe that kids feel the power of book and statement.
The book not only marks tragedy, but offers hope in relating how Marion Stoddardt "created a community from many isolated people who worked together on a common project that really fed their souls." Cherry sees that enviromental movement gives people a way to come together and affect both the local and global communities.
She hopes that this generates action. "I write to get them out there on the street and to take responsility for the planet. I really believe that if they don't we're doomed. Parents are too addicted to this consumptive life style."
Cherry, like many, sees how ecology is kid-driven. And her books help kids to educate their parents. "A lot of parents wouldn't sit down a read a 350 page book, like Al Gore's , but they would sit down and read a 32 page children's book. "So it's a way for me to reach not just children, but parents because when a child and parent have read a book together, they learn truths together and a child will look at the parent and say 'How could this happen?' or 'How could people have let this happen?' The parent will probably register this reaction and say, 'Because nobody did anything.' Children's reaction is 'Let's do something!' Parents think that someone else will do it, kids say we gotta do something and that's the difference."