Lynne Cherry

There are Many Fun and Educational Activities You Can Do Using Lynne Cherry’s Books or to prepare for her visit to your school or conference. Here are some ideas:

*Read The Sea, the Storm and the Magnrove Tangle and then put on a play of the book. Each child can be a different character. Draw the characters on big pieces of paper or cardboard. You can make big characters for the play by recycling cardboard boxes and painting the propagule, the little mangrove tree, the dolphins, the snail, the crabs, the manatees and all the other amazing animals from the book. Then cut out the characters so each child can leap, crawl, scurry or swim across the stage when their character is mentioned.

*After reading The Great Kapok Tree,
*Think about how the rain forest is similar and how it is different from the forest, woodlot, lawn or playground around your school.

*Go outside and collect leaves, draw them and think about their form and function and how they are similar or different from rain forest leaves.

*After reading How Groundhog’s Garden Grew,
*Collect seeds from inside peppers, cantaloupe, pumpkins and beans and dry them in order to preserve them for the following spring.
*Plant sunflower seeds in cups on the windowsill.
*Start a compost pile outside and watch and study the decomposition of vegetable matter into earth.

*Dig up part of the lawn and prepare a garden for planting in the spring.

You can request a teaching guide for How Groundhog’s Garden Grew by sending a sase to Blue Sky Press, Scholastic, 555 Broadway, New York, NY 10012

*Rain Forest/Your Forest Curriculum

*How Groundhog's Garden Grew Parent/Teacher Guide

Contact your congresspeople and ask them to come to your school and discuss the issues they think are the most important in your community. If your river needs cleaning up, bring them a bottle of dirty river water as the kids in A River Ran Wild do (they give a bottle of dirty river water to Senator Kennedy). Regularly write to your senators and reps to tell them what you think about all kinds of issues in your community.

Welcome to the Lynne Cherry Official Web site!

Lynne Cherry is the author and/or illustrator of over thirty award-winning books for children. Her best-selling books such as The Great Kapok Tree and A River Ran Wild teach children to respect the earth.

Lynne used to make frequent speaking appearances. She spoke widely-and passionately--about how children can make a difference in a democratic society--if they feel strongly about something, they can change the world. She talked about how using nature to integrate curriculum makes a child's learning relevant. Lynne's books are inspired by her love of the natural world.

But now Lynne is shrinking her "climate footprint" by not flying. She is very concerned with global climate change and is trying to do her part to reduce her carbon emissions. She will do videoconferencing but is proud of not having been on a plane for 8 months. With photojournalist Gary Braasch, Lynne wrote How We Know What We Know About Our Changing Climate: Scientists and Kids Explore Global Warming.

Richard Louv in his recent book The Last Child in the Woods wrote about how children are becoming less and less inclined to go outside and explore the natural world. As one child explained, he liked to stay inside because that's where the electrical outlets are.

Lynne Cherry hopes to get children excited about the prospect of exploring nature so that they will go outside and explore the natural world. Her books are a good start for getting kids interested in nature.

A Guide to This Website

This web site was created to share information about Lynne's books and about about how, why, when and where she wrote them. Before deciding to write a book on a specific topic, Lynne asks herself, "what are the most important issues in the world that kids should know about and that they might be able to do something to effect?" So, this website has lots of information about the environmental issues that Lynne is concerned about and about how kids can make a difference.

LINKS are in light grey type. If you put the cursor over them, they will turn blue. For example CLICK HERE to hear the song of Flute the Wood Thrush!

For example, you can:
*Click to hear Lynne reading her books on National Public Radio's website.
*Click to go to other web sites with important information.

HELPFUL HINT: REMEMBER TO SCROLL DOWN TO THE BOTTOM OF EACH PAGE. YOU'LL FIND LOTS MORE INFO & PHOTOS FURTHER DOWN.

*Click on the top menu bar to find information about the following:

BOOKS
A list of Lynne's books with color covers and a short description. For more information about each book, for reviews and commentary from fans and reviewers & curriculum for teachers click on the title of each individual book. For the SCHOOL GARDEN TOOL KIT click on the top right sidebar and also look under IN THE NEWS for "TEN WAYS THAT A GARDEN CAN CHANGE YOUR CHILD'S LIFE".

RESUME
Lists biographical information, Lynne's academic and work experience including a list of her artist-in-residencies, her AWARDS, REVIEWS of her books.

AUTHOR TALKS
To the far left on the AUTHOR TALKS page is Lynne's schedule--where and when she will be speaking at schools, conferences, zoos, botanical gardens, arboreta, nature centers or doing book signings.
In the middle section is information about what Lynne talks about in her presentations and information about author appearances and speaking requests and book signings.

IN THE NEWS
Here you can find links to various newspaper and magazine articles and radio interviews about Lynne and Lynne's work and about kids making a difference in the world.

LYNNE'S BLOG
Lynne is going to try to update this blog at least monthly with photos, videos and information about her research trips and things she has learned and wants to share with you.

Local Treasures
Take an Oral History-- A history of Your town through the words of the town elders.
Interview the older people in your community who have lived there all their lives to learn about its history. Ask them about the places they used to swim and explore when they were kids. Ask if those places still exist. If so, where are they? If not, what happened to them?

Ask them about what industries supported the community, whether farming was and is important and about programs in your community to preserve what farmland. Find out if local rivers are swimmable and fishable today.

A group trying to encourage people to appreciate the unique character of the place they lived began a project called Local Treasures. They asked people to tell them what local things, places and people were important to them.
You can do this, too!

Interview and, if possible, videotape your family and others in the community expressing what they find special about the place they live. If possible, videotape the places that they talk about and fade to the place as they are speaking.

Find out if these places are protected or are in danger of disappearing. Let people know how important it is to try to protect places and things they loved before they they are threatened.

Copyright 2003 Lynne Cherry. Site design by Authors Guild. Assistance from Lissa with HTML coding.