I thank her for her calm, fact-based assessment.) (In related news, after hours of intense debate, my mom has named me Handsomest Dude in Town. Because if you want a balanced, agenda-free look at the logging industry, there’s, of course, no better source for information than the National Oak Flooring Manufacturers Association.
Instead, they wisely chose a more fair and impartial partnership to bring their story to the masses – The Truax was published “through a cooperative effort of the Hardwood Forest Association and the National Oak Flooring Manufacturers Association.” That’s right. However, unlike Theodore Geisel, the creators of Truax didn’t rely on some stuffy, tree-hugging publishing company like Random House to release their iconic children’s tale. Seuss’ classic environmental fable, The Lorax.
QUESTIONS TO ASK KIDS WHEN THEY WATCH THE LORAX MOVIE
Usually, it’s just a crappy movie tie-in or a flea market oddity or a Burger King promotional item, but sometimes you find something really, truly odd.Ĭase in point – one day, while on vacation, I found my 4-year-old daughter perusing a worn copy of Truax, a weird pamphlet of a picture book, published in 1995, that is supposed to be an eye-opening rebuttal of Dr. It’s a sad fact of being a parent, but sometimes, for reasons I can’t explain, you will find inexplicably awful books appearing on your kid’s bookshelf. What would you have done to stop the Onceler? Plan a revolt by the animals of the forest.I am the Truax, I speak for the hardwood flooring industry…. A story about four friends, a city in need of help, a bunch of clueless groan-ups and a very angry, very brown and very dangerous cloud. Ps – A cloud called Bhura by Bijal Vachharajani is a brilliant book to read with this to see how even children can make a change. What can you do? – For that is the need of the hour. “Why was the Lorax all talk, no action?” Why is action, important and urgent. The Lorax does nothing to stop deforestation other than tell the Once-ler that he’s destroying habitat. To a pre teen / teen – questions the utter ineffectiveness of The Lorax.
Unless you care about it enough and do something about it, how will things change?īut also brings forth the courage to say the much-needed and the hardest thing to do ….to be the first one to say “I care about it”, needed to start the chain of events. “Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, Nothing is going to get better. When the Lorax disappears from the barren wasteland, he leaves behind a small pile of rocks with one word carved into them: UNLESS. …Watch Al Gor’s Inconvenient truth video ( )Īwareness is critical to solving our global #climate crisis BetheChange Ask kids “How would you convince the Onceler to stop cutting trees?” Watch (how bad can I be? – from lorax the movie)Ĭonnect with the Amazon forests on fire. …“I am the Lorax,I speak for the trees, for the trees have no tongues.” – Can you think of other things that have no tongues (cannot speak for themselves?) – poaching, polluting waters and harming fishes etc. Can you think of things that we think we cannot live without now, but were never needed before? – Mobile phones, whatsapp, airconditioners ? Climate crisis and #Pollution Most of the things we are sold as “needs” are hardly necessary for our survival. …The Oncler claims, “A Thneed’s a Fine-Something-That-All-People-Need!”īut many of our “needs” are manufactured via advertising. …What would you do with a Thneed? CharacterBuilding – Greed vs Need This book is a wonderful way to start a conservation about need vs greed and how they impact life on earth. But it’s not all doom and gloom in this brilliant environmental tale – at the end there is hope. The Once-ler was responsible for cutting down every last Truffula tree to make ‘Thneeds’ that everyone bought, but no one needed.Īlong with the last of the Trufulla trees, went the Brown Bar-ba-luts, the Swamee-Swans and Humming-Fish. In The Lorax he created an unforgettable and passionate little ecologist and the equally unforgettable and spooky, ‘Onceler’ – the villain of the piece. I was out to attack what I think are evil things…” In 1971 came ‘The Lorax’ which Dr Seuss said “came out of me being angry.