Wangari Maathai: The Woman Who Planted Millions of Trees

by Franck Prévot

Hardcover, 2015

Status

Available

Local notes

921 MAA

Barcode

5534

Collection

Publication

Charlesbridge (2015), Edition: Nov, 48 pages

Description

Wangari Maathai received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004 for her efforts to lead women in a nonviolent struggle to bring peace and democracy to Africa through its reforestation. Her organization planted over thirty million trees in thirty years. This beautiful picture book tells the story of an amazing woman and an inspiring idea.

Language

Original language

English

Physical description

48 p.; 10.25 inches

User reviews

LibraryThing member paula-childrenslib
Wangari Maathai received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004 for her efforts to lead women in a nonviolent struggle to bring peace and democracy to Africa through its reforestation. Her organization planted over thirty million trees in thirty years. This beautiful picture book tells the story of an
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amazing woman and an inspiring idea.
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LibraryThing member Sullywriter
One of several recently published picture book biographies about the Nobel Peace Prize-winning founder of the Green Belt Movement in Kenya, and this one stands out for its gorgeous, lush illustrations and a clear, concise narrative notable for linking her activism to feminist and human rights
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issues during her lifetime. Originally published in France.
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LibraryThing member pataustin
Adding to a growing collection of picture book biographies about the Kenyan activist and winner of the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize, this richly colorful and beautifully told biography is a worthy addition to every library. Prevot firmly roots Maathai’s environmental consciousness in her mother’s
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giving her a garden as well as her brother’s innocent question: “Why doesn’t Wangari go to school?” Against the norm, Wangari’s mother sends her daughter to school, and this opportunity changes first her world and then the larger world. After receiving degrees in the United States and understanding the devastating effects that poverty and corrupt government in Kenya, Maathai returns to found the Green Belt Movement and to fight for Women’s rights. Fronty’s folk art style with deep hues is singularly striking, enhancing and echoing the environmental message.
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LibraryThing member UUAALibrary
Excellent telling of how a Kenyan woman started the green belt movement and helped save Kenya's environment - and won a Nobel Prize. Great illustrations help make it a great picture book, too. We used it in summer 2018 for curriculum on trees
LibraryThing member amandabock
This is the third picture book biography of Wangari Maathai in the last few years. It's fine, and the illustrations are lovely. However (and, as always), I wish that the author had incorporated the six pages of backmatter into the main text of the book. As it is, it doesn't add much to the other
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two biographies already in existence.
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LibraryThing member AbigailAdams26
Author Franck Prévot and illustrator Aurélia Fronty join forces in this lovely picture-book biography of Kenyan environmental activist and Nobel Peace Prize-winner Wangari Maathai, originally published in France. Following Maathai from her childhood during Kenya's colonial days, when she received
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an education - very atypical for young girls in this period - the narrative explores her experiences as one of six hundred students invited to study in the United States in 1960, and her activities once she returned to her own land, and discovered the state of environmental degradation there, as a result of widespread deforestation. Maathai's activism, her founding of the Green Belt Movement to replant trees, her opposition to the tyrannical government of President Daniel arap Moi - these are all covered. The book concludes with an extensive afterword that gives a timeline of Maathai's life, a discussion of Kenya today, and of the importance of forests, worldwide...

Originally published in French as Wangari Maathai, La femme qui plante des millions d'arbres, this is the fifth picture-book biography of Wangari Maathai that I have read, following upon Donna Jon Napoli and Kadir Nelson's Mama Miti: Wangari Maathai and the Trees of Kenya, Jeanette Winter's Wangari's Trees of Peace: A True Story from Africa, Claire A. Nivola's Planting the Trees of Kenya: The Story of Wangari Maathai and Jen Cullerton Johnson and Sonia Lynne Sadler's Seeds of Change: Wangari's Gift to the World. I am glad that I bothered to track it down, despite having read all of the foregoing titles, as it is, without a doubt, the best of the lot. The illustrations from Aurélia Fronty are absolutely gorgeous - beautiful color palette, fascinating stylized trees, an interesting overall visual composition on each page - but then, the artwork in many of these other titles is also lovely. No, what sets Wangari Maathai: The Woman Who Planted Millions of Trees apart from its counterparts is that it gives a much fuller account of its subject's life, touching upon the realities of colonialism when Maathai was young, the fact that she was imprisoned multiple times for her activism, and the fact that her behavior was considered atypical for women, in her culture. The portrait created here for young readers is a much richer one, I think, than that available in the four American picture-books mentioned above, and I am glad therefore, that it was translated. Recommended to picture-book readers who enjoy biography, or who are interested in environmental activism and/or stories of inspirational people.
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Lexile

970L

Pages

48

Rating

(26 ratings; 4.4)
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