Restoring Prairie, Woods, and Pond: How a Small Trail Can Make a Big Difference

by Laurie Lawlor

Overview

A small town with few resources comes together to restore nature and create a valuable resource for the entire community in this inspiring middle grade nonfiction book.

Restoring Prairie, Woods, and Pond is about activism at the community level—and tells how a small village transformed a city-owned dumping ground into a nature trail with three distinct ecosystems that runs from an elementary school to a public library and community center. Filled with beautiful photos the book will explain how this trail became a valuable outdoor classroom during covid, a STEM teaching center, a respite for people young and old, and a place for community engagement.Books for a Better Earth are designed to inspire children to become active, knowledgeable participants in caring for the planet they live on.

A Bank Street Best Children's Book of the Year
A Green Earth Book Award Recommended Title

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780823451654
Publisher:	Holiday House
Publication date:	04/25/2023
Series:	Books for a Better Earth
Pages:	96
Product dimensions:	8.28(w) x 10.30(h) x 0.47(d)
Age Range:	10 - 14 Years

About the Author

Laurie Lawlor is a prolific and celebrated author of children's books. Her picture book biography Rachel Carson and her Book That Changed the World was named a Bank Street Best Children's Book of the Year and a National Science Teachers Association Outstanding Science Trade Book and received the John Burroughs Riverby Award. Her Super Women: Six Scientists Who Changed the World was named a NSTA-CBC Outstanding Science Trade Book. She lives and teaches in the Chicago metropolitan area.

Editorial Reviews

10/20/2023

Gr 4 Up—A delightful work that reads like a love letter to the Eagle Nature Trail in Wisconsin. Readers learn about the past struggles and former glory of this special field and forest that has a seasonal pond. They are invited to follow along the journey of the small community's efforts to create a nature trail and restore the surrounding prairie. Detailed descriptions of flora and fauna will excite aspiring biologists. Also included is a complete history of this section of land—how it was abandoned and neglected as a dumping ground—then revived and restored to serve as an incredible living laboratory for students. Various story walk opportunities are possible throughout the year thanks to a vibrant partnership with the local library. Service-learning opportunities abound. Social studies and science teachers will be able to mine this book for a wealth of lessons, rich with photos and charts. Students with an interest in social studies will appreciate the author's efforts to connect larger events in history with the story of the prairie. The book's vocabulary can be challenging, but with guidance, or perhaps as a class read-aloud, this story could inspire similar projects at schools across the country. VERDICT This thoroughly and painstakingly researched book could serve as a blueprint for others seeking to revitalize similar areas. Highly recommended for school library collections.—Darby Wallace

School Library Journal

★ 2022-12-24
“When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.”

The Eagle Nature Trail in Eagle, Wisconsin, spans vast acres and centuries, although the idea of restoring it was conceived only in 2009. The gradual transformation of an impassable wasteland choked by invasive species into three discrete and diverse ecosystems frames Lawlor’s research into the area’s history. In accessible language, she chronicles the glacial origins of Eagle, the arrival of Indigenous peoples, “Euro-American” colonization and agricultural expansion, and the area’s eventual devastation and renewal. Although her descriptions of past happenstance sometimes fill the proverbial gaps a bit fancifully, the relish with which this research has been undertaken rings clearly in every word, holding reader attention throughout. Returning to the nature trail, a waltz through the four seasons explores how the trail brings the local community together, acting as a natural classroom and drawing volunteers from all walks of life to maintain the sanctity of the land they helped the wilds reclaim. Peppered with bright, almost bucolic photographs and quotes from local sources and free from the burden of proselytizing, this is more than a simple account of a wilderness restoration project. This is activism at its most accessible: the beautiful struggles of a region and community to make a large difference in a small world.

A magical and timely story of ecosystems restored to their former glory. (bibliography, source notes, photo credit, index) (Nonfiction. 10-14)

Kirkus Reviews

★ "A magical and timely story of ecosystems restored to their former glory."—Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review

From the Publisher