Franck Prévot

Author Franck Prévot and illustrator Aurélia Fronty join forces in this lovely picture-book biography of Kenyan environmental activist and Nobel Peace Prize-winner Wangari Maathai, originally published in France. Following Maathai from her childhood during Kenya's colonial days, when she received an education - very atypical for young girls in this period - the narrative explores her experiences as one of six hundred students invited to study in the United States in 1960, and her activities once she returned to her own land, and discovered the state of environmental degradation there, as a result of widespread deforestation. Maathai's activism, her founding of the Green Belt Movement to replant trees, her opposition to the tyrannical government of President Daniel arap Moi - these are all covered. The book concludes with an extensive afterword that gives a timeline of Maathai's life, a discussion of Kenya today, and of the importance of forests, worldwide...

Originally published in French as Wangari Maathai, La femme qui plante des millions d'arbres, this is the fifth picture-book biography of Wangari Maathai that I have read, following upon Donna Jo Napoli and Kadir Nelson's Mama Miti: Wangari Maathai and the Trees of Kenya, Jeanette Winter's Wangari's Trees of Peace: A True Story from Africa, Claire A. Nivola's Planting the Trees of Kenya: The Story of Wangari Maathai and Jen Cullerton Johnson and Sonia Lynne Sadler's Seeds of Change: Wangari's Gift to the World. I am glad that I bothered to track it down, despite having read all of the foregoing titles, as it is, without a doubt, the best of the lot. The illustrations from Aurélia Fronty are absolutely gorgeous - beautiful color palette, fascinating stylized trees, an interesting overall visual composition on each page - but then, the artwork in many of these other titles is also lovely. No, what sets Wangari Maathai: The Woman Who Planted Millions of Trees apart from its counterparts is that it gives a much fuller account of its subject's life, touching upon the realities of colonialism when Maathai was young, the fact that she was imprisoned multiple times for her activism, and the fact that her behavior was considered atypical for women, in her culture. The portrait created here for young readers is a much richer one, I think, than that available in the four American picture-books mentioned above, and I am glad therefore, that it was translated. Recommended to picture-book readers who enjoy biography, or who are interested in environmental activism and/or stories of inspirational people.… (meer)

This book is the first time out of the three books I've read about Wangri that I hear of the mother giving her a garden. I found that fact very interesting, and if true why did the other books. not mention it? In addition, I never read about Wangari's father or brother. This particular book about Wangari goes more in depth to her family around her. Also going around and doing motivational speeches to get the villages on the same page about planting trees were shown in two of the tree books. Overall this book was an okay read.… (meer)