Resumo de John Muir Took Walks On Wild Side

-UNKNOWN CORNER == There?s a valley in California that lies underwater. People who saw it a century ago said it looked like a
smaller version of the breathtaking Yosemite Valley.
The last big cause naturalist John Muir took on before he died was to try to stop the planned Hetch Hetchy dam in the Sierra Nevada. After a lifetime of environmental victories, this was a battle Muir lost. Congress approved the dam in 1913, and Muir died a year later, according to one writer, of a broken heart.
But consider what Muir did accomplish in his lifetime. Yosemite is a national park, largely through his efforts. He founded the Sierra Club. And his influence led to the preservation of other national treasures, including the Grand Canyon and Mount Rainier.
Just in time for Earth Day on Saturday, an inspirational new children?s biography paints a fascinating picture of a giant in America?s conservation movement.
?John Muir: America?s First Environmentalist? by Kathryn Lasky is a short, picture-book-style biography, handsomely illustrated with paintings by Stan Fellows.
To create a biography that engages children, an author must know which details to include and which to leave out. It?s a task requiring the greatest restraint.
Lasky, who is the talented author of more than 40 nonfiction and fiction books for young people, obviously researched her subject exhaustively, then exercised that restraint to just the right degree.
The result is a biography that reads like an adventure story.
Children will enjoy the tales of Muir?s wild Scottish childhood. He and his brother David loved to give each other ?scootchers,? or dares, to perform dangerous stunts. A dramatic picture shows the pair walking the roof of their house like a tightrope, their nightshirts billowing in the wind.
John spent hours wandering in the meadows around his home, studying songbirds and hunting for fox dens.
In 1849, the family moved to America and settled in Wisconsin, where there was a new bounty of wildlife for John to observe.
His strict father made the boys work on the farm instead of going to school, so John asked for books to study. He taught himself algebra, geometry and trigonometry. When his father made him get up early to do chores, he got up even earlier, rising at 1 a.m. each day, to study and work on his own projects.
Who knew that John Muir was such an inventor?
He created a sawmill that used creek power to cut logs to size; a device that measured temperature, atmospheric pressure and moisture in the air; and a variety of clocks.
The invention that will fascinate children most ? and that caused the biggest stir at the 1860 Wisconsin state fair ? was an early-rising machine. A clock, connected to a system of weights and pulleys, upended a bed, so a person had no choice but to get up at the appointed time.
Lasky describes Muir?s adventure-filled thousand-mile walk to the Gulf Coast of Florida. He, of course, studied nature all along the way. Then when he eventually landed in San Francisco, she writes of his discovery of the Sierra Nevada and Yosemite.
?He was drawn to the mountains as if by a magnetic force,? she writes.
Again on foot, year after year, through all seasons, he explored and studied the mountains. His dismay at seeing what sheep-grazing and logging did to the wilderness led him to start fighting for protection of the Sierra Nevada.
Again, his activities as a scientist fascinate. During his explorations of the mountains, he developed the theory that glaciers, not earthquakes, formed the peaks.
Children will also be thrilled with tales of his exploration of Alaska?s glaciers. There, his companion was Stickeen, a tiny dog, who leapedacross dangerous crevasses with Muir.
Lasky liberally quotes from Muir?s writings, which help bring him alive.
She includes a good bibliography and information about the Sierra Club.
Hetch Hetchy isn?t mentioned in the book. Writing for younger children, it?s a good idea to end on a note of hope.
Internet surfing reveals, however, that there?s a movement afoot to try and persuade officials to ?undam? the Tuolumne River and return the Hetch Hetchy Valley to its natural state.
John Muir would have liked to know that.

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