Happy Earth Day, everybody! When I think about all the eco-conscious media available nowadays things seem to have come quite a ways from when I was a kid, when there was basically nothing on film or television (ah, but the Lorax, that ever-present Lorax...). So today I'd like to pay tribute to the first children's film I remember seeing with an environmental conscience, Ferngully: The Last Rainforest. It was directed by Bill Kroyer and came out in 1992, in the wake of Disney's resurgence with films like The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast. I was fourteen and enthralled by animation, so I saw this about five times in theaters and read everything I could about it in the papers; today it obviously isn't the best film of the era (that was obvious even then) but it has a nostalgic factor for me, it's a good example from the time of an alternative to Disney and Don Bluth, and the plot and moral are even more trenchant today than at the time (with the debate raging over spotted owls I seem to recall a lot of skepticism about the film's ideology; how to make a kids' film today about, say, cap and trade?). I therefore still recommend to any family with kids between five and thirteen. Here's the trailer, which may just make you feel like it's 1992 all over again, and YouTube has a series of ten-minute clips from it available as well, starting with this one.
For kids who want to go a bit deeper I can still recommend The Magic School Bus and other science programs, and in literature I always return to that Lorax, one of the only two Dr. Seuss books we actually own (and bought used, I suppose to save paper!). (The other is Scrambled Eggs Super, about poaching resources from wildlife for personal gain, so...)
I read this with Loretta about two weeks ago and found her understanding more and more of the application and relevance of it, which was an oddly yet profoundly touching little moment for me.
Finally, the Christian Science Monitor published a story today by Judy Lowe about kids' environmental consciousness in this post-Al Gore age. It's interesting to see some data about what kids and teens know about the environment and do to preserve it; thinking back to my own Boy Scout Environmental Science merit badge days, I think kids today are looking pretty good.
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