B Is For Bicycle In Sustainability

B Is For Bicycle In Sustainability

Juvenile nonfiction
Do you find yourself caught in traffic jams? Do you slog across
what feels like a mile of hot tar because there are a gazillion cars
between you and the store or other destination of your choice? Are
you bothered by the increasingly unsustainability of the methods
people must use to extract gas as we burn through the low hanging
fossil fuel fruit?
Getting out of the mess we're in won't be achieved by a magic
bullet. It will take a lot of intersecting actions. One is using
more person powered propulsion. Two recent children's books I
discovered in the Orono Public Library are very inspirational.
Amsterdam is now considered the Bicycle Capital of the World.
It wasn't always. Allan Drummond's Pedal Power tells the story of the
campaign to put cars in their place.
Back in the 1970s buildings were being torn down to make huge
highways. Dark tunnels and very wide streets had no room for people
powered vehicles, making biking to work or school very hazardous.
Cars ruled the roads.
Not everyone found this state of affairs acceptable. People
began to protest in some very creative ways. The press gave them
great coverage. Then a girl was killed by a car while bicycling to
school and her journalist father revealed that she was one of five
hundred children killed on the roads. The protests got noisier and
more insistent.
Although Pedal Power is targeted to kids, it can powerfully
remind the rest of us that a community pulling together can pull off
some mighty awesome David vs Goliath feats.
Patricia Lakin's Bicycles introduces readers to a novel
concept: making them by hand as opposed to on an assembly line.
Aaron Dykstra does just that. He crafts bikes individually, guided by
customer measurements and the uses they will put them too. Readers
get to see one put together step by step. In a world of mass
production and planned obsolescence, that's a breath of fresh air.
Child readers are encouraged to think of ways they can be
creative and make things by hand. Imagine the wonderful skills and
insights they can develop. I know people who are aces at knitting and
crocheting winter wear to keep ears and fingers warm in frigid
weather. My cross stitch pictures warm people's hearts and make them
smile.
On a personal note, today, the first day of calendar spring, I see
swaths of snow outside my studio window. Another nor'easter may be on
the way. I signed the letter saying yes, I'll attend UMaine grad
school. I'm working to get a GA or job to afford to go. That is the
terrifying part for me. Eugene bought the ingredients for my home made
lasagna so that's what's for supper chez moi.
A great big shout out goes out to fellow Mainers and other folk who
are still awaiting flowers and robins and the other harbingers of
spring. We will cherish them all the more when they arrive.
jules hathaway




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