In
Companions in Wonder: Children and Adults Exploring Nature Together, co-editors Stephen Kellert, Ph.D. ’71, Tweedy Ordway Professor Emeritus of Social Ecology, and Julie Dunlap, Ph.D. ’87, present an anthology of personal essays recounting adventures great and small with children in the natural world. The authors—parents, teachers, mentors and former children—describe experiences that range from bird watching to an encounter with an apple butter-loving grizzly bear. Rick Bass captures fireflies with his children and reflects on fatherhood; Michael Branch observes wryly that both gardening and parenting are "disciplines of sustainability;" Lauret Savoy wonders how African American children can connect to the land after generations of estrangement; and Sandra Steingraber has "the big talk" with her children—not about sex, but about global warming. By turns lyrical, comic and earnest, these writings guide us to closer connections with nature and with the children in our lives, for the good of the planet and our own spiritual and physical well-being. The book, published by MIT Press, is available at
amazon.com.
