Rachel: The Story of Rachel Carson
Grade 3-5-She loved the woods, built a summer cottage in Maine, wrote about the ocean, and finally published her landmark book about the poisonous pesticides killing wildlife. Ehrlich skims a few highlights of Carson's life and work, sometimes poetically. "A transparent, elongated paramecium drifted slowly across the microscope's field.-In that simple one-celled organism she saw the complexity of the universe." The author focuses on Carson's love of nature and writing, but her life seems uneventful. The dozen dated and sketchy episodes begin with a childhood scene in 1912, then touch on teenage and college years, and skip from a 1929 bit of research at Woods Hole to 1945 when Carson edited documents for the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries. Though the biologist doesn't come to life in the text, Minor's fine watercolor-and-gouache paintings provide splendid full- and double-page views of various settings and credible portraits. While the spare narrative may be somewhat nebulous for primary-grade readers, it might serve as an evocative introduction for slightly older children. The epilogue, dating Carson's death and crediting her with starting the environmental movement, mentions Maine's Rachel Carson Wildlife Preserve.Margaret Bush, Simmons College, BostonCopyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.