Rachel Carson was a young woman who had a passion for nature and writing. As she got older and went to college she majored in biology, wanting to know more about the world and what lies beneath it. She went on to write Silent Spring, which detailed the dangers of poisons and pesticides that were being used at the time. Throughout the book you hear of all of Carson’s contributions and the challenges she faced, before she succumbed to cancer and passed away. When I picked out the book the name Rachel Carson sounded familiar, but I couldn’t put my finger on why I knew the name. When I got to the part about Silent Spring, I realized that is how I knew of Carson, but the sad part is I only knew that I did not know all the other amazing things that Carson did. The ending of the book was my favorite part and made me tear up, as Rachel and her friend go to watch the migration of the butterflies as her bucket list thing to do before she passed. This book would be great to read to inspire students and get them talking about the environment. I really enjoyed this book and would recommend for others to read it. ( )

This was a very informational biography on the life of Rachel Carson. The book is written in chronological order, all the way from Rachel's childhood to her final years of life. Each page is titled, given a date, and focuses on several significant moments in Rachel's life. Throughout her whole life, Rachel loved nature and exploring the world around her. That love for nature led to her write books, including Silent Spring, which ultimately started the global environmental movement. ( )

I liked this book for 2 reasons. One reason is that the biography was written with descriptive detail just like in a fiction book. This helped the readers imagine what it would have been like to be Rachel Carson. For example, when they were talking about how Rachel felt after the criticism she got from her book about preserving nature that was published, the author wrote this quote to illustrate how she felt. “She was like a tiny, nearly transparent ghost crab she’d once written about, alone on a beach at night, facing the roaring surf”. This quote really made the reader connect with Rachel about her feelings of the issues. Another reason I liked the book is because the illustrations really matched the descriptions of Rachel’s life that was in the text. For example, in the chapter that talks about her and her niece’s excursion hunting fireflies, the picture showed her and her niece looking over the lake. The pictures had a warm blue night sky with fireflies dancing on the page. The colors were rich and it looked so realistic. It will make the reader want to jump in the story too. The theme of the story is to care for the environment because much of Carson’s work was for learning about the creatures in our world and how important they are to the Earth. ( )

Summary: Rachel Carson grew up in Pennsylvania, writing and spending time in nature all day. So it was small wonder that, when she grew up, she became a marine biologist, who wrote many books about the sea, which influenced many people to care about the environment. Her book, Silent Spring, is widely agreed to have started the modern environmental movement.

Review: This book is a wonderful biography for children about one of the most influential writers of the 20th century. The language is descriptive, but not full of jargon that would trip up a young reader. The book gives an overview of Rachel Carson's life that hits all of the major points, without bogging down the reader with too many facts. And the illustrations are simply marvelous. This book is a wonderful biography about one of my favorite people.

Central Idea of Rachel: The Story of Rachel Carson: Rachel Carson was one of the most influential writers of the 20th century, who overcame many hardships to make a difference. ( )

I believe this book is an extremely informational biography about Rachel Carson, the famous environmentalist. I liked it for many reasons. First, the book is written in chronological order in a timeline fashion. Each set of pages has a description and date of Carson’s significant accomplishments on the right and a picture portraying the event on the left page. Although the book is written in an extremely informational way, it also tells the story of her life. Thus, I liked that children can grasp the idea that events of a person’s life can be written in a chronological, story fashion. It is important for young readers to understand that life events can be told and written down. While this is a children’s book, it is also informing about an environmentalist’s life. Thus, the descriptive words and terms could definitely broaden the reader’s vocabulary. For example, “A transparent elongated paramecium drifted slowly across her slide,” allows the child to use context clues to determine the author’s vocabulary use. The purpose of this book was to inform children about Rachel Carson’s successes regarding protecting animals and the environment. Her encouragement is exemplified throughout the text, as well as at the end when her fight against cancer was described. With this being said, I loved this book as a form of biography for children. ( )