Authors: Deborah O'Neal and Angela Westengard
Summary: This story is set in Concord, Massachusetts during the time when mills and machines were beginning to become popular. The story is set around nonfiction person Henry David Thoreau and his love for nature rather than the busy city. In this story, David is thought to be the oddball of the town since he is not in love with buying all the newest clothing and items like everyone else in the town. Henry decides to move out to Walden Pond and build himself a small house so that he can get away from the smog filled town of Concord. Though Henry loves his new abode, the town and its mayor is coming up with a way to demolish the woods where Henry lives by replacing it with a toothpick factory. Only after David brings the town full of coughing, tired, sneezing people into the woods so that they can listen and view the true beauty of nature do the citizens decide to not go through with their plan to demolish the woods.
Lesson: After reading this book, I would have my students take a walk around the grounds of the school. I grew up with an elementary school that had wonderful grounds that included numerous gardens and woods to explore so I would hope to have a school like this so that I could take my students out to explore nature. My only instructions for students would be for them to focus their attention on the sounds, views, textures, etc of nature so that when they get back into the classroom, they could write a letter to the toothpick mill as if they were a citizen explaining the wonders of Walden Woods.
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