This is key to your knowledge toolkit.
Old or new, these are MUST READ (or must watch) pieces of media. Books, video, radio and other media featured here are items we consider essential to your knowledge about our forests, our environment, and the humans who influence each of them. Stay informed about the environment. And tell us about "Must Knows" you find.
Last Child in the Woods
by Richard Louv
Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2006
310 pages
Review by Peg Griffith
Nature does more us than provide us with recreation and beauty. It’s more than a home and food source to wildlife and plants. It’s more than the source of and protection for our water supply. It’s more than a contributor to our weather. It is much more even than all that. Nature is a source of our creativity and curiosity; the keeper of our physical health; and the wellspring of our mental health. According to Richard Louv, without close contact with the outdoors, our children fail to develop freedom, independence, creativity, curiosity, the abilities to focus and observe. In other words, we lose essential parts of ourselves.
In Last Child in the Woods, Louv advances the notion that there is a malady he calls "nature deficit disorder." Deprived of nature, children lose the opportunity to wonder, to explore, to pretend. They may also lose the ability to listen, focus, and attend. Without these skills, they fail in school. Instead, they fidget. They act out. Children are verbs – given their own choice, most children are on the move all the time. Think of children you know between the ages of 3 and 10: What do they ask? What do they do? At age 3, their favorite word is "Why?" That is a word of exploration and learning. How do they learn? By using their senses of touch, sight, smell, taste, and sound. By moving and comparing. Louv also reminds us that exploring nature builds physical strength and mental confidence by removing fear. Instead, parents actually are teaching their children to be afraid: "Don’t go out there – the animals might get you!" or "Don’t climb that tree – you might fall!"
By the 1970s, most U.S. residents lived in urban or suburban areas rather than in rural areas. Even as their children played less outside or even had access to woods, farms, and streams, their time with TV, computers, and videogames was increasing. Not coincidentally, the diagnosis of Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder was on the increase. Since 2003, children medicated with Ritalin and other psychotropic drugs have increased 66% (American Psychiatric Journal, 2009). So what do we have? Drugged up restless kids who are afraid of the outdoors.
Read this book. Give it to every parent, grandparent and teacher you know. Take a child with you into the woods to see the flowers and the trees, the birds and the streams. Let them get dirty. The dirt washes off. The learning and the memories are forever.
Get the book from Amazon.com with this link.
ForestWatch Book Review archive:
- The Big Burn by Timothy Egan
Want to give us feedback or have a suggestion for something we should see? Call our office at 706-635-8733, or send an e-mail to
