Jen Cullerton Johnson

This debut picture biography, idealized and inspiring, draws on Wangari Maathai’s autobiographical writing to present an overview of the activist’s life from childhood to the present. Johnson sows her narrative with botanical metaphors: “Her mind was like a seed rooted in rich soil, ready to grow.” The mugumo tree symbolizes Kenya’s transition from agrarian bounty to environmental precipice: It yields figs for humans and animals yet bows to destruction as multinational corporations raze forests to profit from coffee plantations. Richer than other treatments of Maathai for children and more grounded in her work’s implicit feminism, this details her education in Nairobi and the United States, her imprisonment for activism and her scientific and environmental work, resulting in the planting of 30,000,000 trees and economic empowerment for Kenyan women. Sadler’s beautiful scratchboard illustrations incise white contoured line into saturated landscapes of lush green leaf patterns, brilliant-hued textiles and undulating, stylized hills. Maathai always wears a colorful headscarf or fabric bow, and the community spirit she resuscitates is joyfully celebrated on every spread. Vibrant and accomplished. (author’s note, sources, quotation sources) (Picture book biography. 6-11)

-Kirkus Review… (mehr)

In my opinion, I thought this was a delightful book for numerous reasons. First, I absolutely loved the illustrations in it. From cover to cover they jump out at you with exuberant colors and magnificent flow of lines and shapes. It really captures not only the readers’ attention but the culture of Africa as well because she wears her cultural pieces throughout. Another reason I liked this book was because of all of the life-lessons it addressed. For example, it stressed the importance of working for the rights of women where they do not have many. The main character, a woman named Wangari, went to America to get an education and realized she could lead the way for other women and girls by accepting a teaching job at the University of Nairobi teaching science where not many women professors taught. She worked for equal rights so that female scientists would be treated with the same respect as male scientists. Her drive to make a difference is an admirable and inspiring one. Not only did she work for the equality of women but for the land around all of them as well. She went from village to village planting rows of trees that looked like green belts across the land to stop the greedy businessmen from cutting it down for their own economical purposes. People, mainly men, sneered and snickered at her but she was unfazed by their negativity. She was even jailed and not even that could stop her from spreading her message to the rest of the world. I really appreciated the teachings of this book and would definitely include it in my classroom for children to read.… (mehr)

Seeds of change is an inspiring story about Wangari, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004. This story is about how Wangari's family helped her to understand the importance of tress in the world. She went on to go to school in African then move to the United States to get her PhD. She moved back to Africa and wanted to make a change, she saw that the trees were being torn down and started a movement to plant tress and tried to stop the trees from getting torn down. She was put in jail where she taught the other inmates the importance of trees, when she got our she helped the other inmates and also continued planting trees and teaching science and biology to young women in Africa.

I think this story is really inspirational. I always like to read about women who do great things and go back to help other young women succeed in life. I think talking a stance for what you believe in is very inspiring and I will read this story to my daughter when she is older.

In this classroom I would talk to the children about what they would do to make the world better, or even the community. We would think of ways to help the community and plant some seeds or even a tree if we could get that.… (mehr)