THE RED WASTELAND:.(A Personal Selection of Writings About Nature for Young Readers)(Young Adult Review)(Brief Article)

A Personal Selection of Writings About Nature for Young Readers

Ed. by Bruce Brooks. Holt, $15.95 ISBN 0-8050-4495-7

Brooks's (The Moves Make the Man; What Hearts?) aim with this collection of works from 20 naturalist writers is to demonstrate not how people write about what happens in the natural world, but how they think about it." He begins with the most approachable, Roethke's poem "The Bat," which neatly sets up Brooks's criteria for each selection--that it ask the question "Where does man fit? Where do I?" He concludes forcefully with a call to action, via Rachel Carson's "The Sea Around Us." Along the way, he conveys a diversity of credos with selections …