Engage your students or homeschoolers in an interesting environmental story by Lynne Cherry.
A River Ran Wild begins by taking the reader back into time when the Nashua River was home to the Nashua Indians.
As settlers moved into the Nashua River Valley and built factories along the river, the River with the Pebbled Bottom became a stink filled sewer.
Eventually an effort was made to clean up the river.
This creative nonfiction text is beautifully written and is on a fourth grade readability level.
Children will encounter lots of new vocabulary words such as decomposed, dwellings, and thatch.
The story provides a perfect opportunity to connect literature with environmental science and social studies.
The text can be a bit challenging, and may require teacher or parent support and more than one reading for full comprehension to occur.
The watercolor and pencil illustrations depict another time and place.
The most interesting of Cherry's illustrations are the artifacts that border the text.
Children enjoy discovering and identifying the artifacts.
Children's vocabulary development is supported through the illustrations.
For example, next to the page where the word "thatch" is located there is a wonderful illustration of an Indian village with thatched dwellings.
Although the book received mixed reviews it has stayed on the backlist for many years.
The opening is an excellent writing example and can be used to teach descriptive writing.
The text is rather long for reading aloud, but the content and writing is worth the time.
This book raises natural questions and text to world connections.
A River Ran Wild is filled with cross-curricular teaching opportunites.
The book is a lesson in environmental conservation and protection.
It's a perfect teaching compliment for units on pollution, rivers, Native Americans, ecology, inventions, the Industrial Revolution, and more.