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What We're Reading:
Current Picks
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"Mama Miti:
Wangari Maathai & the Trees of Kenya" by Donna Jo Napoli, illus. by Kadir
Nelson (Simon & Schuster, 9781416935056, $16.99, for ages 4 and older)
This picture book glows from every page as Napoli and Nelson write and
illustrate the inspiring story of ecologist and Nobel Peace Prize winner
Wangari Maathai. (She was the first African woman to win the award, the
first to obtain an advanced science degree, the first to head a university
department--and she was educated, in part, right here in Kansas at a small
college in the northeast of our state as an international scholarship
student in the 1960s. Go, Kansas!)
Maathai's fame begins as ever-increasing numbers of Kenyan village women
come to her with their ever-multiplying problems: scarce firewood, lack of
clean water, poor crops, sick cattle. For each ailment, she prescribes a
solution, one with deep roots, broad branches, and crowning leaves. Wangari
prescribes trees!
Some of Africa's native trees provide abundant fruits, some give medicines
for illness, and others grow rapidly to provide ample building materials or
stove wood. As her movement grows, Wangari's trees--and the women who plant
and tend them—become the heroes who have helped make many Kenyan villages
flourish again. That's how Wangari becomes known as Mama Miti: "the mother
of trees."
This simple, profound revolution is all shown in Kadir Nelson's peerless
illustrations. He uses his usual luminous paints along with a new collage
technique to capture the colors and patterns of East African textiles. From
page to page, a beautiful piece of green cloth may form a child's shirt, a
woman's dress, or the forested hills of the Kenyan countryside. The effect
is mesmerizing, and it's sure to put Nelson in the running for major
illustration awards again this year.
This is lovely, stirring picture book with a simple message for us all: in
the midst of change, development, and upheaval, there is always a place for
wisdom and peace.
Review by
Mark David Bradshaw, January 14, 2010
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