Under the Covers: Bedtime story edition

Silly reader, books are for kids!

Posted by Sarah van Schagen at 7:18 AM on 17 Apr 2007

Read more about: green living | books | parenting

Remember when you were a kid and the best part of the day was when you were just starting to get sleepy and you'd snuggle up in bed with your mom/dad/sibling/nanny/manny/Uncle Leroy to read a bedtime story?

And the best bedtime stories were the ones with big illustrations of imaginary creatures like "Mr. Ferebee" and "Mugwumps" and "the Contented Dooks" and "the Yawning Dimbys" -- all of which kinda scared you but also gave you really awesome dreams?

Yeah, The World Below is one of those books.

It also happens to be part of the Greenpeace Works venture to bring together celebs and socially conscious causes. The celeb angle on this book is a foreword by Sahara author Clive Cussler, not that you'd care if you were a kid all snuggled in bed ready for mom/dad/sibling/nanny/manny/Uncle Leroy to break out all the silly voices for each imaginary character (like "the Keeper of the Garbenstungle"!).

Want to give your kids something with fewer pictures (um, why?) and a bit more reality-based substance? Keep reading:

The Gaia Girls series, aimed at kids ages 9 and up, focuses on four young female characters who are approached by Gaia, "the living organism of the earth," and asked to help by using their special powers over the four elements -- earth, air, fire, and water. Hmm, reminds me of a certain early '90s cartoon ...

The first in the series, Gaia Girls: Enter the Earth, introduces protagonist Elizabeth Angier, who "thought her summer on the family farm would be full of work and play with her best friend, Rachel, and her other best friend, her dog, Maizey."

But instead, the book jacket reveals, a big hog farm moves in next door. Oh no!

Will Elizabeth have the strength to fight a large corporation? Or will her upstate New York home be spoiled by profit-driven pork production that fouls the air, land, and water?

Available this June, the second book in the series, Gaia Girls: Way of Water, focuses on, you guessed it, the element of water. Both are printed on recycled paper.

Finally, if you're more into reading during daylight hours, a new series of DIY books for yoots -- or the yoot at heart (yoot at hoot?) -- will be available in late May.

Ecocrafts: Gorgeous Gifts includes projects like sock puppets, fridge magnets, and a chunky bracelet, while Ecocrafts: Dream Bedroom features ideas ranging from door hangers to desk organizers -- all fashioned from brightly colored recycled objects. Both of these titles are also printed on recycled paper -- quite fittingly, I suppose.

For story: Under the Covers: Bedtime story edition
4 Comments | Post a Comment

My daugthers share your memory

and I know a lot of children's books by heart "...Good night, nobody. Good night, mush. Good night to the old lady whispering, "Hush."

In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world

by biodiversivist at 8:27 PM on 17 Apr 2007

mythological references

Being neither young nor a parent, I find all this very new and strange. I started looking at the "World Below" site, but shall return to see it all later, when it is civil to turn on the speakers.

As for "Gaia Girls," "Captain Planet," and many other recently written stories and entertainments for children, which incorporate old story-motifs and mythologies, I am confused. Will the references to those subjects lead children to explore the old literatures in which they are first found? Or, on the other hand, will the new adaptations and borrowings suggest that the old literatures are obsolete and uninteresting?

By the way, not that it matters, but having bed-time stories read to me was not part of my own experience. Once I learned to read, I read my stories on my own. Thank God, there were many of them, and they were very good. But that happened during the day. Bed-time was for prayers.
Mind you, I am quite confident that the old stuff is powerful enough to survive. But I have less confidence about today's very delicate young reader, and video-consumer.

My feeling is, a very good home-curriculum for children can be created, including walks in local "natural" places, e.g. beaches, forests, deserts; visits to regional good natural-history museums and aquariums; and discussions of good old stories that are in part about connexions to the Earth and to other living things.

Perhaps it is unfair of me to judge, but I look upon these video entertainments as rather cynical, despairing compromises to an all-powerful culture that does not really love the Earth and the creatures that live upon it.

Not that it matters, but my own experience does not include bedtime stories at all. Once I learned to read, I read my own stories, during the day. Bedtime was for prayers, Amen. I did indeed sneakily read after bedtime, from time to time, a habit in which I have persisted.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

by caniscandida at 3:13 AM on 18 Apr 2007

Gaia Girls

I've actually read Gaia Girls just because I thought the concept sounded interesting (who doesn't want some fictional ecological heroes that can do things humans usually can't?).

The writing was pretty stiff at first for how kids actually talk (non-contractions vs. actually using contractions). As far as the story, it deals with some humor, friendship woes, and the ecological ramifications of agricorporations who desecrate the land.

I'm looking forward to the second book and hoping the stiff language eases up. I've also read online that the author has visited elementary schools and read aloud passages to students.

Here's two websites, if you're so inclined:

http://www.gaiagirls.com/
http://www.chelseagreen.com/2006/items/entertheearth

by radrerun at 1:52 PM on 18 Apr 2007

contractions in writing

I know, I know, I am definitely in the minority here, but a huge pet-peeve of mine, regarding style, is that contractions should never be written, unless the writing is reporting someone's actual spoken words.

If there is dialogue in "Gaia Girls" between characters who are native English-speakers, then probably their dialogue should include contractions, since we naturally and constantly use contractions in our speech.

But outside of dialogue, contractions should be avoided.

There may be other reasons why the style of "Gaia Girls" seems "stiff," too, but I would not know.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

by caniscandida at 2:23 PM on 18 Apr 2007

ADVERTISING POLICY

You are not logged in. Thus, you cannot post a comment. If you have an account, log in. If you don't have an account, well, by all means go make one! Meet you back here in five.