Grow

Grow is a “squeaky-green” children’s book.  According to the liner notes, Beaton and Bradley used “the greenest” local printer and “enlisted a group of excellent graphic design students to hand-bind the book,” both exceptionally worthy causes.  Featherproof publishes the book, so they’re local as well.  Each set of heavy paper-board pages features, on the left side, a word or phrase and a daily time line spanning from 8:00 to 8:00. The right side features a white dotted-line design evocative of an environmental issue relating to the facing page and set against a uniquely colored background, ten in all.  According to Featherproof’s website, the book was designed to “take a child through a typical day, implementing a routine that is environmentally and socially sound” and to “benefit the environment, community, health, and a child’s awareness of self in the larger world.”

This book pushes the envelope. The design of the book is fantastically modern and matches the theme to a tee.  It’s well constructed of “green” materials, and it’s the right size and durability for a child to read, though the typesetting and line art have a decidedly forward, avant-garde feel to them that I’ve never seen before in anything remotely resembling a children’s  book.  It’s deep.  It’s as demanding as it is enchanting.

I recently handed the book to my sister and, with little fanfare other than saying that it was an environmentally friendly children’s book–information that can be gleaned from the cover, as it turns out–said to her “read this to [your two-and-a-half year old son] Calvin.”  She did and I watched, knowing that they’ve tried to raise him with an understanding of environmental concepts like recycling and organic, local food.  She read the word and asked him to identify the image on each facing page.  Some he recognized, most he could not.  I decided that what I had initially thought about the book was as true in practice as it was in theory: it isn’t possible for a child of that age to immediately grasp it, or for its message to be gleaned at face value.  It is successful, however, on two fronts: it is the first children’s book that I’ve ever seen that asks a child to think very abstractly while exposing him to poignant, avant-garde design, and it makes an excellent tool for helping parents to create environmental associations between the words that are on the page and actions a child might take in other parts of his life–”off” referring to saving water, “plant” elucidating caring for the living environment.  In the hands of what I must imagine are the planned consumers of this book–environmentally conscious, thoroughly modern parents–it could be an engaging teaching tool.

That all not withstanding, it’s unavoidable to note that this book is impossibly subtle, and unrealistic for a child to negotiate without intensive assistance from an adult.  It’s not going to become a child’s favorite selection for an evening read-to by a parent without some work on the parent’s part.  The strong design aesthetic from which it hails most likely won’t resonate much with a child, perhaps making it hard to hold a child’s attention with it.

But isn’t that point? If you’re trying to raise a child outside the mainstream, why use a conventional, short-attention-span-assuming book to teach him to associate concepts at the most rudimentary level (single words) with broader ideals than you’d find in most books (or classrooms or communities). The idea behind this book is that “ride” might mean more than just an action you do involving a tricycle–it can be re-associated to include thinking about getting somewhere by bike if possible, before resorting to other means. Why not think of organic, local foods first when the word” eat” comes to mind, or of keeping shared areas clear of trash, not just of putting away toys, when the words “pick up” are spoken. As the website suggests, if this book becomes part of a lifestyle while raising a child, each time you say “turn off that light” on the way out the door it can, over time, come to be tied to more than just “flip the switch.”  If you really can look at the time line on the left-hand page and note that at 10am my child and I did “make” a toy out of something that might otherwise have been thrown away, the book can have meaning and depth for a child.

This book is not for every parent (or every child). It’s not, probably, for most parents. Your average children’s book these days seeks to up the cognitive ante, appealing to new-age parents who want to rear a smarter child. This book does more (or perhaps less) than that.  It diverges from other children’s books by regressing its content back and asking the parent to make up for what it lacks in curb appeal by making it part of a routine.  This book is almost something a child should learn to like because it’s good for them and for the environment, not because it stoops to being window-dressed with bright colors and easy-to-understand pictures.  Why not push a child to be content with something more subtle than a normal, shallow book and expose them to something beautiful in a different way while teaching them a modern, important lesson?