The Sense of Wonder: A Celebration of Nature for Parents and Children

by Rachel Carson

Overview

First published a half-century ago, Rachel Carson's award-winning The Sense of Wonder remains the classic guide to introducing children to the marvels of nature.

In 1955, acclaimed conservationist Rachel Carson—author of Silent Spring—began work on an essay that she would come to consider one of her life’s most important projects. Her grandnephew, Roger Christie, had visited Carson that summer at her cottage in Maine, and together they had wandered the surrounding woods and tide pools. Teaching Roger about the natural wonders around them, Carson began to see them anew herself, and wanted to relate that same magical feeling to others who might hope to introduce a child to the beauty of nature. “If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder,” writes Carson, “he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement and mystery of the world we live in.”

The Sense of Wonder is a timeless volume that will be passed on from generation to generation, as treasured as the memory of an early-morning walk when the song of a whippoorwill was heard as if for the first time. Featuring serene color photographs from renowned photographer Nick Kelsh, “this beautifully illustrated edition makes a fine gift for new and prospective mothers and fathers” (Gregory McNamee), and helps us all to tap into the extraordinary power of the natural world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062655356
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	05/30/2017
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	112
Sales rank:	76,832
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 7.10(h) x 0.40(d)
Lexile:	1280L (what's this?)

About the Author

RACHEL CARSON (1907-1964) was known as “the patron saint of the environmental movement.” She was the author of Silent Spring, which exposed the dangers of pesticides and fertilizers. She passed away as she was finishing The Sense of Wonder.

NICK KELSH is a photographer who is the author of How to Photograph Your Life. A native of Fargo, North Dakota, he lives in Philadelphia with his wife, Anne.

Read an Excerpt

One stormy autumn night when my nephew Roger was about twenty months old I wrapped him in a blanket and carried him down to the beach in the rainy darkness. Out there, just at the edge of where-we-couldn't-see, big waves were thundering in, dimly seen white shapes that boomed and shouted and threw great handfuls of froth at us. Together we laughed for pure joy-he a baby meeting for the first time the wild tumult of Oceanus, I with the salt of half a lifetime of sea love in me. But I think we felt the same spine-tingling response to the vast, roaring ocean and the wild night around us.

A night or two later the storm had blown itself out and I took Roger again to the beach, this time to carry him along the water's edge, piercing the darkness with the yellow cone of our flashlight. Although there was no rain the night was again noisy with breaking waves and the insistent wind. It was clearly a time and place where great and elemental things prevailed.

Our adventure on this particular night had to do with life, for we were searching for ghost crabs, those sand-colored, fleet-legged beings which Roger had sometimes glimpsed briefly on the beaches in daytime. But the crabs are chiefly nocturnal, and when not roaming the night beaches they dig little pits near the surf line where they hide, seemingly watching and waiting for what the sea may bring them. For me the sight of these small living creatures, solitary and fragile against the brute force of the sea, had moving philosophicovertones, and I do not pretend that Roger and I reacted with similar emotions. But it was good to see his infant acceptance of a world of elemental things, fearing neither the song of the wind nor thedarkness nor the roaring surf, entering with baby excitement into the search for a "ghos."

It was hardly a conventional way to entertain one so young, I suppose, but now, with Roger a little past his fourth birthday, we are continuing that sharing of adventures in the world of nature that we began in his babyhood, and I think the results are good. The sharing includes nature in storm as well as calm, by night as well as day, and is based on having fun together rather than on teaching.