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Children’s environmental literature: from ecocriticism to ecopedagogy

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Abstract

Beginning with a review of ecocriticism’s scholarly and activist origins and development through the related fields of eco-composition, ecofeminist literary criticism, and environmental justice literary studies, this essay discusses children’s environmental literature from the intersecting standpoints of animal studies, environmental justice, and ecofeminist literary criticism. From that intersectional standpoint, the essay raises three central questions for examining children’s environmental literature, and offers six boundary conditions for an ecopedagogy of children’s environmental literature.

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Notes

  1. Glotfelty, C. (1996). Introduction. In C. B. Glotfelty & H. Fromm (Eds.), The ecocriticism reader: Landmarks in literary ecology. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, xviii.

  2. Glotfelty, xxi.

  3. Ibid., xxv.

  4. Weisser, C. R., & Dobrin, S. I. (Eds.). (2001). Ecocomposition: Theoretical and pedagogical practices. Albany: State University of New York Press; S. I. Dobrin & C. R. Weisser, (2002). Natural discourse: Toward ecocomposition. Albany: State University of New York Press.

  5. Anderson C., & Runciman, L. (1995). A forest of voices: Reading and writing the environment Mountain View, CA: Mayfield; Anderson, L., Slovic, S., & O’Grady, J. P. (Eds.). (1999). Literature and the environment: A reader on nature and culture. New York: Longman; Levy W., & Hallowell, C. (1994). Green perspectives: Thinking and writing about nature and the environment. New York: HarperCollins; Morgan S., & Okerstrom, D. (Eds.). (1992). The endangered earth: Readings for writers Boston: Allyn and Bacon; Ross, C. (Ed.). (1995). Writing nature: An ecological reader for writers. New York: St. Martin’s Press; Slovic S., & Dixon, T. F. (Eds.). (1993). Being in the world: An environmental reader for writers. New York: Macmillan; Verburg, C. J. (1995). The environmental predicament: Four issues in critical analysis. Boston: Bedford-St. Martin’s; Walker, M. (Ed.). (1994). Reading the environment. New York: Norton.

  6. Heller, C. (1999). Ecology of everyday life: Rethinking the desire for nature. Montréal: Black Rose Books; King, Y. (1989). The ecology of feminism and the feminism of ecology. In Plant, J. (Ed.), Healing the wounds: The promise of ecofeminism pp. 18–29. Santa Cruz, CA: New Society Publishers; Warren, K. (1990). The power and the promise of ecofeminism. Environmental Ethics, 12, 125–146.

  7. Murphy, P. D. (1995). Literature, nature, and other: Ecofeminist critiques. Albany: State University of New York Press; Gaard, G., & Murphy, P. D. (Eds.). (1998). Ecofeminist literary criticism: Theory, interpretation, pedagogy. Chicago: University of Illinois Press.

  8. Anderson, L. (Ed.). (1991/2003). Sisters of the earth. New York: Random House/Viking; Bigwood, C. (1993). Earth muse: Feminism, nature, and art. Philadelphia: Temple University Press; Gates, B. (1998). Kindred nature: Victorian and Edwardian women embrace the living world. Chicago: University of Chicago Press; Norwood, V. (1993). Made from this earth: American women and nature. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press; Stein, R. (1997). Shifting the ground: American women writers’ revisions of nature, gender, and race. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia; Westling, L. (1996). The green breast of the new world: Landscape, gender, and American fiction. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press.

  9. Carr, G. (Ed.). (2000). New essays in ecofeminist literary criticism. Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press; Anderson, L., & Edwards, T. S. (Eds.). (2002). At home on this earth: Two centuries of U.S. women’s nature writing. Hanover: University Press of New England.

  10. Gaard and Murphy, Ecofeminist Literary Criticism, 12.

  11. Adamson, J., Evans, M. M., & Stein, R. (Eds.). (2002). The environmental justice reader: Politics, poetics, & pedagogy. Tucson: University of Arizona Press; Stein, R. (Ed.). (2004). New perspectives on environmental justice: Gender, sexuality, and activism. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

  12. “Ecology and the Child,” special section of Children’s Literature Association Quarterly 19: 4 (Winter 1994–1995); “Green Worlds: Nature and Ecology,” special issue of The Lion and The Unicorn, ed. Suzanne Rahn, 19: 2 (December 1995).

  13. Bradford, C. (2003). The sky is falling: Children as environmental subjects in contemporary picture books. Children’s Literature and the Fin de Sie’cle, 111–120; Monhardt, R. & Monhardt, L. Children’s literature and environmental issues: Heart over mind? Reading Horizons, 40(3), 175–184; Op de Beeck, N. (2005). Speaking for the trees: Environmental ethics in the rhetoric and production of picture books. Children’s Literature Association Quarterly 265–287; Sturgeon, N. (2004). ‘The power is yours, planeteers!’ Race, gender, and sexuality in children’s environmental popular culture. In R. Stein (Ed.), New perspectives on environmental justice: Gender, sexuality, and activism (pp. 262–276). New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

  14. Dobrin S. I., & Kidd, K. B. (Eds.). (2004). Wild things: Children’s culture and ecocriticism. Detroit: Wayne State University Press.

  15. Humes, B. (2008). Moving toward a liberatory pedagogy for all species: Mapping the need for dialogue between humane and anti-oppressive education. Green Theory & Praxis: The Journal of Ecopedagogy, 4(1), 65–85.

  16. Kahn, R. (2008). From education for sustainable development to ecopedagogy: Sustaining capitalism or sustaining life? Green Theory & Praxis: The Journal of Ecopedagogy, 4(1), 1–14.

  17. Kahn, 10.

  18. Ibid., 11.

  19. Platt, K. (2004). Environmental justice children’s literature: Depicting, defending, and celebrating trees and birds, colors and people. In S. I. Dobrin & K. Kidd (Eds.), Wild things: Children’s culture and ecocriticism (pp. 183–184). Detroit: Wayne State University Press.

  20. Platt, p. 184.

  21. Ibid., p. 186.

  22. Silverstein, S. (1964). The giving tree. New York: HarperCollins.

  23. Gaard, G. (1993). Ecofeminism and native American cultures: Pushing the limits of cultural imperialism? In Ecofeminism: Women, animals, nature (pp. 295–314). Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

  24. Burningham, J. (1989). Oi! Get Off Our Train! London: Jonathan Cape.

  25. Bradford, “The Sky is Falling,” p. 119.

  26. Richardson J., & Parnell, P. (2005). And tango makes three. New York: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers.

  27. Bradford, p. 116.

  28. Geisel, T. S. (Dr. Seuss). (1971). The Lorax. New York: Random House.

  29. Op de Beeck, p. 266.

  30. Henderson, B., Kennedy, M., & Chamberlin, C. Playing seriously with Dr. Seuss: A pedagogical response to The Lorax. In Dobrin, S. & Kidd, K. (Eds.), Wild things: Children’s culture and ecocriticism (pp. 128–148).

  31. Ibid., p. 139, 142.

  32. Marshall, I. S. (1996). The Lorax and the ecopolice. Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, 2(2), 85–92.

  33. Ross, S. (1996). Response to ‘The Lorax and the Ecopolice’ by Ian Marshall. Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, 2(2), 99–104.

  34. Ross, p. 103.

  35. Ibid.

  36. Lyons, D. (2002). The tree. Bellevue, WA: Illumination Arts.

  37. Op de Beeck, p. 270.

  38. Pilkey, D. (1990) Twas the night before thanksgiving. New York: Scholastic/Orchard Books.

  39. Shiva, V., & Radha. (1996). Rani and felicity: The story of two chickens. New Delhi, India: Research Foundation for Science, Technology, and Natural Resource Policy, cited in Platt 2004.

  40. Greene, J. (n.d.). Mojo’s story of Clara the chicken. Canada: Wild Bird Care Centre/Black Feather Productions.

  41. Kessler, D. (1991). Lena and the whale. Charlottetown, P.E.I.: Ragweed Press.

  42. Bix, D. (2006). Buddy unchained. Edina, MN: Gryphon Press.

  43. Peet, B. (1970). The wump world. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

  44. Farrelly, P. (2006). Abigale the happy whale. New York: Little, Brown & Co.; de Mariscal, B. L. (1995). The harvest birds/los pájaros de la cosecha. San Francisco: Children’s Book Press.

  45. Louv, R. (2005). Last child in the woods: Saving our children from nature deficit disorder. Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin Books.

  46. Monhardt & Monhardt 2000; Sobel, D. (1996). Beyond ecophobia: Reclaiming the heart in nature education. Nature Literacy Series #1, Great Barrington, MA: The Orion Society; Chapel, F., James, S., & McDermott, J. C. (2008, March). The green earth book award. Book links, 26–29, www.ala.org/booklinks accessed 6/20/08.

  47. Mockler, K. (2004, November/December). Green kids books. Green Guide, no. 105. http://www.thegreenguide.com/doc/105/books. Accessed July 7 2008; Op de Beeck 2005.

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  1. Department of English, University of Wisconsin, River Falls, WI, USA

    Greta Gaard

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Gaard, G. Children’s environmental literature: from ecocriticism to ecopedagogy. Neohelicon 36, 321–334 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11059-009-0003-7

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