Nonfiction blog

 

Title: Planting The Tress of Kenya 

Author: Clare A. Nivola
Age group: 4-8 y/o
Awards: Jane Addams Children’s Book Award for Book for Younger Children 
Genre: Biographical/ Informational

Summary

This book is about a girl named Wangari who grew up in Kenya and admired the land they lived in clothed in green and the fig tree was sacred. She left for college and it was about five years when she was gone, but when she came back it seemed as if she was gone longer than that because the land of Kenya had changed so much. The land where there was once so many trees and green, had changed due to the people growing crops and cutting down the trees of Kenya. That is when Wangari decided to change that, she decided to teach the women of the countryside to plant trees. She taught them how to collect seeds, prepare the soil, wet the soil, press a hole and insert the seed into the ground. She told the women to care for them as if they were babies and water them twice a day. Although it did not work out the first time, Wangari did not give up, and slowly the women began to see all their hard work paying off, If they cut down a tree, they planted two in its place. The story is about how Wangari started her movement and thirty million tress have been planted since, and they are still planting them. 

Evaluation

I would use the book in the classroom because this book teaches something amazing. The book can be used to teach the students that a single person can make a huge change in the world or even a classroom. The book can also be used to teach the students that trees are important for everyone’s life. It can be tied to biology and how the trees help us by converting carbon dioxide into oxygen for us to breathe. It can also be used to teach the students that our world is bound to change, and that it changes every day. The book is really good an I really like the lesson that it taught. The illustrations in the book were also really great they went hand in hand with the text and were very detailed as well. It is a good read and I would most definitely use it in the classroom because I wish we had more trees where I lived and at the parks I have gone to.