Spring 2008 - University of Georgia Press

A Natural Sense of Wonder
Connecting Kids with Nature through the Seasons
June
5 1 ⁄2 x 8 1 ⁄2 | 152 pp.
Paper, $16.95t | 978-0-8203-3103-4
Rick Van Noy
Answering the call to action raised by The Last Child in the Woods
The technology boom of recent years has given kids numerous reasons
to stay inside and play, while parents’ increasing safety concerns make
it tempting to keep children close to home. But what is being lost as
fewer kids spend their free time outdoors? Deprived of meaningful
contact with nature, children often fail to develop a significant
relationship with the natural world, much less a sense of reverence and
respect for the world outside their doors.
A Natural Sense of Wonder is one father’s attempt to seek alternatives to
the “flickering waves of TV and the electrifying boing of video games”
and get kids outside and into nature. In the spirit of Rachel Carson’s The
Sense of Wonder, Rick Van Noy journeys out of his suburban home with
his children and describes the pleasures of walking in a creek, digging
for salamanders, and learning to appreciate vultures. Through these and
other “walks to school,” the Van Noys discover what lives nearby, what
nature has to teach, and why this matters.
From the backyard to the hiking trail, in a tide pool and a tree house,
in the wild and in town, these narrative essays explore the terrain of
childhood threatened by the lure of computers and television, by fear and
the loss of play habitat, showing how kids thrive in their special places. In
chronicling one parent’s determination (and at times frustration) to get
his kids outside, A Natural Sense of Wonder suggests ways kids both young
and old can experience the wonder found only in the natural world.
“The question of how parents should appropriately connect their
children with nature is accessibly and gently articulated here. This is
a great book for a wide range of parents and is full of the realities of
parenting in a postmodern age. Whereas Richard Louv’s Last Child in
the Woods is issues oriented and broadly sociological, A Natural Sense of
Wonder is hands on.”—David Sobel, author of Beyond Ecophobia
“A wonderful, timely, and much needed lyrical reminder of the fundamental
importance of children’s ongoing experience of nature as the
basis of creativity, problem-solving, critical thinking, and so much more
that ultimately makes us human. Van Noy’s book is a profoundly moving,
powerful, and eloquent reminder of this basic truth, with which our
modern society, estranged from nature, has lost touch to its ultimate
detriment.”—Stephen R. Kellert, coeditor of Children and Nature
Also of interest
Teaching the Trees
Lessons from the Forest
Joan Maloof
Paper, $16.95t | 978-0-8203-2955-0
The Cincinnati Arch
Learning from Nature in the City
John Tallmadge
Paper, $16.95t | 978-0-8203-2690-0
Cloth, $49.95y | 978-0-8203-2676-4
Rick Van Noy is an associate professor of English at Radford University in Virginia.
He is also the author of Surveying the Interior.
Rick Dickinson
Nature
www.ugapress.org 800.266.5842