© 2011 by Thomas F. Yezerski
Meadowlands:
A Wetlands Survival Story
- written and illustrated by
Thomas F. Yezerski - First edition: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2011
- Second edition: Thomas F. Yezerski, 2024
- 36 pp., full-color illustrations
- ages 5-10, grades K-5
- ISBN: 979-8-218-29990-3
“Even after being dug out, filled in, run over, and dumped on, the wetlands still showed signs of life. The Hackensack River still flowed south. The tide still rose north from the Atlantic Ocean. The river and tide still met in the Meadowlands twice a day, as they had for 10,000 years. Because they did, the ecosystem had a chance to recover.”
Summary
The 20,000 acres of wetlands in New Jersey now known as the Meadowlands were once home to hundreds of species of plants and animals. But in the four hundred years since European explorers first arrived in the Meadowlands, people have dammed up, drained, built over, and polluted this formerly vibrant ecosystem — and all but destroyed it. Still, signs of life remain — under bridges, on the edges of parking lots, and beside train tracks. Slowly but surely, with help from activist groups, government organizations, and ordinary people, the resilient creatures of the Meadowlands are making a comeback, and the wetlands are recovering. Meadowlands: A Wetlands Survival Story is the ecological history of one of the most infamous urban wetlands as well as an exploration of the ways that humans and nature share the same environment and depend upon each other.
© 2011 by Thomas F. Yezerski
Awards
Notable Children’s Books of 2011 – New York Times
Cook Prize Honor – Bankstreet College of Education
Horn Book Fanfare – Horn Book Magazine Best Books of 2011
100 Titles for Reading and Sharing, Best Non-Fiction Children's Books of 2011 – New York Public Library
Best Books of the Year, 2012 – Bankstreet College of Education
Growing Good Kids Book Award – Junior Master Gardener and The American Horticultural Society
Outstanding Science Trade Book – National Science Teachers Association
PA Young Readers Choice Award Master List – Pennsylvania School Librarians Association
2011 National Book Festival Featured Selection – New Jersey Center for the Book
Junior Library Guild Selection
© 2011 by Thomas F. Yezerski
Reviews
“Yezerski not only can write a book on how to teach children about their environmental impact — he has. Meadowlands is tremendously (but not intimidatingly) informative, fun to read and gorgeous to look at.”
“Yezerski adroitly captures the tensions and hope in the sometimes adversarial, sometimes beneficial relationship between humans and the environment in this marvelous ecological history of the Meadowlands of New Jersey.”
“The goal is not displacement but coexistence. Although readers who know the Meadowlands personally will have a special interest in the topic, the idea of fostering and protecting plant and animal habitats in urban environments can resonate with a broad audience.”
“Judicious ink and watercolor illustrations pair with tender prose to tell the story of the Meadowlands estuary in New Jersey, which bounced back from being ‘one of the worst places in America’”
“Thomas Yezerski’s pleasingly presented history of this ‘flat, wet place in New Jersey’ helps all of us see the workings of an estuary, spongy ground where a freshwater river meets the ocean tides.”
“With beautiful ink-and-watercolor art, this picture book tells an urban-conservation story of how the New Jersey wetlands are slowly recovering from decades of pollution.”
“Reminiscent of Lynne Cherry’s A River Ran Wild (1992) in its subject and design, this appealing story of environmental recovery is simpler in its text and even clearer in its illustrations . . . A spectacular offering . . .”
“The text handily covers the particulars, but keen, patient observers can ‘read’ the ecological story through the illustrations alone.”
© 2011 by Thomas F. Yezerski
Blog Reviews
© 2011 by Thomas F. Yezerski
Details
Meadowlands is the first book I have written myself since A Full Hand, in 2002. It took me so long to make it because I did not follow the rule “Write what you know.” Instead, I wanted to write about the New Jersey Meadowlands, a place that not only fascinated me but also bewildered me. I wanted to figure out the mish-mash of busy highways, working railroads, forbidding factories and impenetrable marshes. I needed to know exactly what was going on down there.
Once I started researching the Meadowlands, I did not know where to stop. I heard that pirates used to hide in the reeds. I read that one of the factories made Yoo-Hoo chocolate drink. I discovered a fenced-off warehouse that was closed because of poisonous chemicals dumped in the creek nearby. I walked around a swamp of cedar tree stumps left from hundreds of years ago. Dozens of fiddler crabs waved at me as I paddled by in a canoe, and a muskrat swam alongside.
I wrote hundreds of pages of notes and took hundreds more photos. How was I going to cram all of this into a picture book? I had to pick one good story out of everything I learned. The best story was about the Meadowlands, the place itself. It had survived in spite of everything that happened to it, and it was beautiful in spite of its confusing messiness. So, little by little, I starting taking out parts of the story that weren’t part of the most important story, even if I had worked very hard on them.
One story that did not make it into the book is very important to me nonetheless. When I had just started writing Meadowlands, I went to a publisher’s party and met a young lady who lived and worked in Manhattan. I asked if she wanted to go for a walk around a frozen mudflat at the foot of a closed landfill in New Jersey. She said she did, and I knew she was the one for me. Over the years, we went on many “dates” to the Meadowlands. While I was painting illustrations for the book, we planned our wedding. She has been with me through all those visits to the swamp and the often mucky process of writing, illustrating and publishing. Eleni is truly my swamp rose mallow, and I dedicate this book to her.
© 2011 by Thomas F. Yezerski
Bibliography
Cherry, Lynne. A River Ran Wild: An Environmental History. San Diego: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1992.
Clayton, W. Woodford, and William Nelson. History of Bergen and Passaic Counties. Philadelphia: Everts and Peck, 1882.
Coniff, Richard. “Swamps of Jersey: The Meadowlands.” National Geographic, February 2001.
Dowd, Gregory Evans. The Indians of New Jersey (New Jersey History Series; 3). Trenton: New Jersey Historical Commission, 1992.
50 Simple Things Kids Can Do to Save the Earth. Kansas City: Andrews McMeel Publishing, 1990.
Hackensack Riverkeeper. “The Hackensack River: A True Come-Back Story.” Hackensack Tidelines, Spring 2004. EarthWorks Group.
Kaufman, Kenn. Lives of North American Birds. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1996.
Kiviat, Erik, and Kristi MacDonald-Beyers. The Hackensack Meadowlands: A Metropolitan Wildlife Refuge. Edited by Karen Moore and Carolyn Summers. Lyndhurst, N.J.: Hackensack Conservation Trust, 2006.
Kraft, Herbert C. The Lenape: Archaeology, History, and Ethnography. Newark: New Jersey Historical Society, 1986.
Lane, Wheaton J. From Indian Trail to Iron Horse: Travel and Transportation in New Jersey, 1620-1860. Princeton University Press, 1939.
Marshall, Stephen. “The Meadowlands Before the Commission: Three Centuries of Human Use and Alteration of the Newark and Hackensack Meadows.” Urban Habitats, Volume 2, Number 1, December 2004.
Quinn, John R. Fields of Sun and Grass: An Artist’s Journal of the New Jersey Meadowlands. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1997.
Ross, Edward Hunter. Indians of the Passaic Valley. Newark, N.J.: Newark Museum Association, 1963.
Staub, Frank. America's Wetlands. Carolrhoda Books, 1995.
Sullivan, Robert. The Meadowlands: Wilderness Adventures At The Edge Of A City. New York: Scribner, 1998.
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. “Significant Habitats and Habitat Complexes of the New York Bight Watershed.” Charlestown, R.I.: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Southern New England-New York Bight Coastal Ecosystems Program, 1997.
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service New Jersey Field Office. “The Hackensack Meadowlands Initiative: Preliminary Conservation Planning for the Hackensack Meadowlands Hudson and Bergen Counties, New Jersey.” Pleasantville, N.J.: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, March 2007.
Werner, Alfred. Inness Landscapes. New York: Watson-Guptill Publications, 1973.
Wright, Kevin. “The Hackensack Meadowlands: Prehistory and History.” Lyndhurst, N.J.: Hackensack Meadowlands Development Commission, December 1988.