Seeds of Change

Seeds of Change

• author:  Jen Cullerton Johnson  http://www.jencullertonjohnson.com/_jen
• illustrator:  Sonia Lynn Sadler  http://www.sonialynnsadlerarts.com/
• medium:  rendered in scratchboard and oil

• year of publication:  2010
• publication city:  New York
• publisher:  Lee & Low Books
• ISBN:  978-1-60060-367-9

Annotation:  A biography of Kenyan Nobel Peace Prize winner and environmentalist Wangari Maathi, a female scientist who worked in the struggle for women’s rights and her own Green Belt Movement, an effort to restore Kenya’s ecosystem by planting millions of trees.

Personal Thoughts:  This book took me by surprise!  I really liked it.  I didn’t realize when I started reading that the story if a nonfiction biography.  I thought it was fiction.  The more into the story I got, I thought this book has great transition, from a story of a young African girl getting an education to that girl fighting for women’s rights and starting a major environmental movement re-planting trees where greedy corporations had deforested huge areas of once fertile forest.  The further along I read, I realized there was no way author Jen Cullerton Johnson was making this up.  It’s too believable!  Sonia Lyn Sadler’s illustrations are rich with color and look like traditional African imagery. 

I would recommend this book for its multi-faceted dimensions.  It promotes equal access to education.  It promotes the struggle for women’s rights.  Finally, it describes how environmentalist movements can help repair the damage done by deforestation and general destruction of the environment.

***Curricular Connection – 9^th grade World History, Nobel Prize Winners, African Deforestation, 20^th Century Environmentalism

12^th grade Civics, Women’s Rights Movements, Gender Politics in Africa