“Imagine a city draped in a blanket of green … Is this the city you know?”
On View Summer 2021
Take the kids for a stroll down Warren Street and discover the secret life of the urban forest with this summer’s StoryWalk. A Forest in the City, written by Andrea Curtis and illustrated by Pierre Pratt, traces the history of trees in cities over time, and teaches the importance of nurturing these complex ecosystems – in which we play an important role. StoryWalk starts at the Little Free Library on 4th Street and ends at the 7th Street Park. Look for pages on odd side of street along sidewalk or in shop windows.
This beautiful book of narrative non-fiction looks at the urban forest, starting with a bird’s-eye view of the tree canopy, then swooping down to street level, digging deep into the ground, then moving up through a tree’s trunk, back into the leaves and branches. It discusses the problems that city trees face such as the abundance of concrete, poor soil and challenging light conditions. It traces the history of trees in cities over time, showing how industrialization and the growth of populations in urban centers led to the creation of places like Central Park in New York City, where people could enjoy nature and clean air. It wasn’t until Dutch Elm disease swept across North America, killing hundreds of thousands of trees, that people realized how important trees are to our cities.
The StoryWalk Project was created by Anne Ferguson of Montpelier, Vermont and developed in collaboration with the Vermont Bicycle & Pedestrian Coalition and the Kellogg-Hubbard Library. This project was funded in part by a grant from the New York State Environmental Protection fund, NYS DEC Hudson River Estuary Program. This StoryWalk is a collaboration with Hudson Hall.
Check out more StoryWalks in the area at https://clctrust.org/education/story-walks/