The Lorax, a children’s book by Dr. Seuss, tells the story of the Lorax, a fictional character who speaks for the trees against the greedy Once-ler who represents industry. Written in 1971, The Lorax was banned in parts of the United States for being an allegorical political commentary. Today the book is used for educating children about environmental concerns (see www.seussville.com/loraxproject/). Even so, some people consider the book inappropriate for young children due to its “doom and gloom” environmentalism.
The book The Truax, by Terri Birkett, involves a forest industry representative offering a logging-friendly perspective to an anthropomorphic tree, known as the Guardbark. This story was criticized for containing skewed arguments, and in particular a nonchalant attitude toward endangered species. About 400,000 copies of the book have been distributed to elementary schools nationwide.
Read both books. You can find The Lorax at your local public library, and you can download The Truax as a PDF from http://woodfloors.org/truax.pdf.
Evaluate the stories and work with the information to answer the following questions:
What are the credentials of the author of each book? In each case, do the person’s credentials make him or her reliable/unreliable as a storyteller? Explain.
Connect each story to the key concepts in the chapter:
What are the underlying attitudes and worldviews of each story?
Does each story reflect social traps and, if so, in what way?
How might each story contribute to environmental literacy? Explain.
What does each story have to say about sustainability? Explain.
What supporting evidence can you find for the main message in each story? In the story itself? From doing some research?
What is your response to each story? What do you agree and disagree with in each case? Explain.
Find an additional case study online at http://www.macmillanhighered.com/launchpad/saes2e