In a children’s picture book, a girl grows too many zucchini and learns about the sharing economy
To slow down climate change, we need to keep moving. Not everything we try will work. But not trying definitely won’t work.
Consider the story of a little girl named Zora. She wasn’t actually thinking about climate change. She just didn’t want to waste food. So she figured out a way to avoid waste and bring people together.
That’s how it starts. And that’s how hope, optimism and action get started, and get restarted.
Zora is the protagonist of “Zora’s Zucchini,” a new children’s book by
Seattle author Katherine Pryor, illustrated by Anna Raff. Although this book may not seem like an obvious choice for a Real Change book review, Zora and the book’s subtle environmental themes fit right in.
The drive for environmental and social change must not stop. It needs to be everywhere, on all levels. Reaching (not just teaching) kids, and learning from them as well, brings us closer to action and to making a difference.
The simplest stories — and, by nature, books for young kids need to be simple — are the most memorable. That doesn’t mean simple stories aimed at young kids are easy to tell. But Pryor, Raff and the one-of-a-kind, Bellevue-based book publisher Readers to Eaters make it look easy.
I was surprised how much I loved this little picture book, which you might read to or with a 5-year-old. My enthusiasm may be rooted in being a zucchini-growing gardener myself and knowing how much my kid and I would have liked reading this book years ago.
Spoiler alert! Zora finds a bunch of free zucchini starts, plants them in her family’s garden and ends up with a zillion zucchini. After trying everything to make sure they all get eaten, from force-feeding her family to giving them away to everyone she knows, she finally succeeds in her quest by starting a neighborhood garden swap.
That may seem like a slender plot line even for a kid’s book, but Pryor’s witty writing and Raff’s engaging
illustrations power it along. For the pint-sized readers, you also have your tried-and-true, picture-book appeal like the cute cat who shows up on most pages. (“There’s the cat, Mom!”)
As you and your kid enjoy the story, the socially minded, but very practical, concepts in this book might just seep into your consciousness.
Sharing and reusing — from garden exchanges to tool libraries to clothing swaps — have the power to transform the environmental movement, in my idealistic mind. These types of projects awesomely conserve resources, reduce waste, fight climate change and build community, all at the same time.
Any of these endeavors takes lots of work to pull off, even on a small scale, as Zora and her family and friends find out. Whether we’re starting our own project or encouraging others, we shouldn’t downplay the time and hard work involved.
But leading the charge by starting one of these projects is certainly easier than it used to be, thanks to all the resources now available.
The concise, well-written afterword in “Zora’s Zucchini,” aimed at adults and the bigger kids, gives tips and resource leads for reducing food waste, but first explains why we should care: “About one-third of the world’s food is wasted, which means that all the water, work and time it took to grow that food is also wasted. So, what can you do if you have extra food?”
The thoughtful answers provided in the afterword include hosting a harvest party for your school or neighborhood, preserving your food (canning, pickling, freezing, drying) and donating your extra fruit and veggies to a food bank.
For specifics on how to make those ideas happen, you’ll need to resort to the 21st century go-to solution: the Internet search. For food bank donations, I’ll give you a little help.
The local non-profit Solid Ground has on its Lettuce Link project web pages an excellent list of more than 60 food banks and meals programs in King County that accept donations of fresh food from your garden. It also says which items the food banks’ clients are most interested in and how you should package your food donations. Find that list at solid-ground.org/programs, and call the food bank first to double-check before you bring in your donations.
Before we say goodbye, for now, to Zora and her endless supply of zucchini, I want to give a shout-out to the book’s publisher, Readers to Eaters (reader
stoeaters.com), run by Philip Lee. I’ve known Lee for a few years, and I’ve always been impressed by the quiet quality and impact of what they do.
This tiny niche publishing company promotes “food literacy” by putting out high-quality kids’ books and partnering with community organizations. At its core, food literacy simply means gaining “a better understanding of what and how we eat,” according to Lee.
Zora knows. She’s also learned that the rewards of starting a garden swap are worth all the hard work. In the book’s last line, Zora, at her successful garden swap with a big smile on her face, is “already plotting what to grow next summer.”
Tom Watson manages King County’s EcoConsumer public outreach program (KCecoconsumer.com).