Children's Book Review: Thoreau at Walden

Thoreau at Walden by John Porcellino (Hyperion/The Center for Cartoon Studies, $16.99 hardcover, 9781423100386/1423100387, $9.99 paperback, 9781423100393/1423100395, 112 pp., ages 9-12, May)
 
Henry David Thoreau's ideas seem particularly relevant at a time when "going green" and "sustainability" are part of the national discourse. From March 1845 to September 1847, Thoreau recorded journal entries that were eventually published as Walden; or, Life in the Woods. He built a 10' x 15' house with a bed, table, desk, three chairs, a fireplace for cooking and keeping warm, and a lantern by which he read and wrote. If you've read Walden, you know all this already. And you may well know the quotations that Porcellino selects, which come not only from Thoreau's "experiment in living," but also from his other essays (he touches on the jail episode that led to writing "Civil Disobedience," for instance). Porcellino arranges these by season, constructing one year on Walden Pond. Just as Thoreau took complex ideas and framed them in simple phrases that everyone could understand, Porcellino uses deceptively simple strokes of the pen to convey some very complex ideas. Over his pen-and-inks, Porcellino uses a wash in the same color as the "light and sandy soil" in which Thoreau planted his five-and-a-half acres of vegetables. And in this inspired graphic-novel treatment, Porcellino also is able to chronicle the silences on Walden Pond--those awe-inspiring moments that can occur only when one communes with nature utterly alone.
 
The book begins with Thoreau's mile-long trek from his house to the town center. In the initial panels, Thoreau is the sole figure; these images give way to a bustling square surrounded by buildings and populated by townsfolk. As the people look on quizzically, Thoreau's thought balloon reveals his observations: "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation." The desperation shows on their faces in the form of stubble and worry lines, or fear (in the case of the illustration for "Trying to get into business and trying to get out of debt"). Thoreau looks genuinely relieved to return to his humble dwelling. One can almost hear the quiet. The opening to winter features two half-page panels and a full-page panel, opposite, depicting a snowfall on the pond, in the woods and the field surrounding Thoreau's cabin. Porcellino thus emulates the silent wonder of the first snow. In another series of panels, which unspools over three pages, Porcellino shows Thoreau as he enters the woods, spots an owl at rest, and his "cronch!" in the snow alarms the creature; then both man and bird, comfortable in each other's presence, fall asleep. The spring finds Thoreau floating in a boat in the middle of Walden Pond; the panels vary in size to demonstrate the body of water's scope and glory: "A lake is the landscape's most beautiful feature. . . It is Earth's eye / looking into which the beholder measures the depths of his own nature." By giving Walden Pond this weight and moment, Porcellino allows us to take in the double-meaning--that while we behold it, all of nature seems to be in our possession, but at the same time, while in contemplation of nature, we also look deep within ourselves. This inviting compendium is certain to send readers scurrying for Thoreau's original writings and, thanks to a detailed list of the quotations' sources, they will know just where to go.--Jennifer M. Brown