Ralph Hasenohr on reading aloud

Explaining the Earth to children, without wagging a finger

The question comes up earlier than you expect. Usually while reading aloud, while shopping, or when a child finds a bee in the room. How do you explain to a four-year-old that we need to treat the Earth carefully, without frightening them and without preaching?

After many readings in kindergartens, my experience is simple: rules don't land. A sentence like "we have to protect the environment" is as abstract to a child as a tax return. What lands are pictures. Children remember pictures, and they keep thinking inside them.

A lake that never floods its banks

My book has a lake whose water sits higher than its banks. It still never overflows. The boy asks why, and the lake answers:

“Why should I take up more space than I really need? If I flowed over my banks, I would make everything around me wet. That wouldn't be very nice of me.”

Everything worth saying about moderation is in that sentence, and no child needs to know the word sustainability for it. They understand: you don't take more than you need, because otherwise you take it from someone else. Five-year-olds get that instantly, they know it from the sandbox.

The sun as a flower

The second idea is bigger: the sun is really the blossom of a giant plant that grows in a land no one knows. And it only opens again every morning as long as people take good care of the Earth.

That is not a lesson, it is a bargain children understand: there is something beautiful, it can disappear, and it depends on us. At this age, nothing more is needed.

What I would do differently today

In two places the book states its moral outright. Today I would cut those sentences. The pictures carry the story anyway, and children notice exactly when someone is trying to educate them. If you read it aloud, feel free to skip those lines. The story loses nothing.

Practical notes for reading aloud

• Read aloud from age four, read alone from around seven
• About 15 minutes, fits into one evening
• 42 pages, illustrated throughout
• Afterwards, ask how the child pictures that land. At my readings, that is when the best drawings appeared

You can see those drawings on How children draw the green Unifant. There is also an excerpt.