Just a Dream

Walter lives in his own little world.  He sees his friends around taking care of the Earth, but he is too enthralled in video games and TV to take time out of his busy schedule to conscious of the environment around him.  His favorite TV show is set in the future with tiny planes and robots.  He has a dream one night where he is in his favorite show several years in the future.  Only one thing is different, there are neither tiny airplanes nor any robots, instead there is one messed up world.  He looks around him to see mountains of trash, trees being cut down, smog and pollution, tiny fish barely surviving, and traffic everywhere.  He wakes up from his dream and before it is even daylight, decides he wants to do something to help save the planet from becoming what he saw in his dream.  He realizes the importance each person makes in protecting and conserving the environment.  He even dedicates his birthday to the saving of the environment and encourages his friends to all do the same.  He again has a dream about the future, but this time a different dream where he sees the positive impact of his actions on the future generations.

                In, Just A Dream, Chris Van Allsburg shows the consequences of not conserving and protecting the environment in an excellent way in which children can relate.  Through the connections to tv, video games, and the world around children today, Van Allsburg captures children’ attention by taking them on a dream with Walter.  Walter’s dreams are fascinating as he travels somewhere different as the pages turn.

                The set up of the book intrigues children of all ages.  While there are a lot of words, and it would likely be best for a Read-Aloud, it engages children through the dreams and the set up of the text on the pages.  Van Allsburg also illustrates in addition to authoring it.  His illustrations tell a huge part of the story.  In every part of Walter’s dream, there is a full spread of an illustration without any words.  Children can look at these pages for hours learning more about the story.  On the pages that have both illustrations and text, most of the text is on a passage on one page while the other focuses on the illustration.  The illustrations on these pages are small, but lead into the larger spreads following each of these pages.  This allows for children to listen to what is being read, predict what might be happening next, and then focus on the illustration and allow their imagination to go to work without the teacher saying any words.

                This book would be an excellent book to read any time of year, but especially around Earth Day.  I know as a young child in elementary school I didn’t understand the importance of conservation or Earth Day, much less how I could affect any of it.  I think this book does an excellent job of showing students how their daily actions affect the future.  Because it follows Walter and his specific decisions prior to his dreams and then shows the effects of those decisions in his dreams, it is easy to see the impact one person can have on the environment.

                While this book may take a while to read, especially if you allow students the full time to take in all of the wonderful illustrations, it is well worth it when they can empathize with Walter and understand the consequences of their actions in relation to the environment around them and how they are affecting the future every day.