Maw Books

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Seeds of Change by Jen Cullerton Johnson and illustrated by Sonia Lynn Sadler is the biography of Wangari Maathai who won the Novel Peace Prize in 2004 for her environmental activism which included founding The Green Belt Movement which teaches people to take care of the environment by planting trees, recycling, and seeking alternative energy sources.  She was the first African woman and environmentalist to receive the award.

Her mother had taught her to revere and love the trees of Kenya.  When few girls went to school, Wangari’s parents managed to send her where she excelled in science.  She won a scholarship to attend college in Kansas where she learned that a woman could do anything she wanted to.  She found her strength as a woman scientist. America had changed her.

When returning to her homeland she accepted a teaching job at the University of Nairobi in a profession were there were very few woman teachers and even less female scientists.  But she also witnessed a change happening in Kenya.  Trees and the land were being destroyed and so much that the people depended on was lost. Wangari had an idea that started as small as a seedling but that would effect  much change in the environment of her country and that was to plant trees.  “We might not change the big world but we change the landscape of the forest,” she said.

Seeds of Change is Wangari Maathai’s inspirational story.  It is a story of planting more than thirty million trees in Kenya.  It is also a story of overcoming and persvering through those who work against you.  It is a story of woman’s rights.  It is a story of giving back to the Earth when we take too much from it.

To quote the book, “She understood that persistence, patience, and commitment – to an idea as small as a seed but as tall as a tree that reaches for the sky – must be planted in every child’s heart. ‘Young people you are our hope and our future,’ she said.”

An excellent portrayal of  Wangari Maathai.  And a great reminder that even as an adult, I learn so much from picture books.


Links of interest: Jen Cullerton Johnson website, Sonia Lynn Sadler website, The Green Belt Movement, Wangari Maathai biography on Nobel Prize site.
Genre: Non-fiction picture book. Approx ages 4-8.
Publisher: Lee and Low Books.  June 30, 2010.
Hardcover, 40 pages. ISBN 160060367X
Copy source: Review copy sent from publisher.
Seeds of Change is available from your favorite independent bookstore, Powell’s, and Amazon.

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