I'm a lifelong resident of New Jersey who avoids that part of the state as if my life depended on it. Growing up not far from the hustle and bustle of the Meadowlands, I longed for the day when I would move to an area that is less congested and more abundant in nature. It is very difficult to imagine the place as a beautiful, nature filled wetland.

Fact filled overview of the history, development and natural habitat that is the Meadowlands. The author discusses the human development, but also spends a great deal of time highlighting the animals and natural progress as well. Discusses conservation in a factual way, emphasizing the visible benefits of changed behaviors and practices.

Large illustrations on each page show the many views of the area. Small captioned images frame the page adding depth to the page's content. These are wonderful for a one-on-one storytime where the readers can dawdle on each page, discussing what they mean. They could also help make this book a useful starting point for New Jersey research projects. For expample: a page shows an illustration of a "chocolate drink" that looks very much like Yoo Hoo, which turns out was a NJ based business. Seemingly random pictures hint at a greater story.

Appendix includes author's note, selected bibliography (print and web). ( )

This book has an amazing and true nonfiction story to really impress children and adults alike. In New Jersey, there are 20,000 acres of meadowlands that have been built over and polluted for the last four hundred years. This book is the story of what happened and the information about the reclamation of some of this area. Thomas F. Yezerski wrote and illustrated this beautiful book with dense informational text and pictures, yet it is a readable story. The borders themselves provide some education as pictures of artifacts, birds, animals, and people are illustrated and named along the page edges. A class is shown on a field trip to this area to demonstrate how children might be involved in such a project. At the very end, websites and books are recommended for further study. The author's note states the history of the Meadowlands begins around 12,000 B.C. E. when the Wisconsin Glacier retreated and formed Glacial Lake Hackensack, and more history is provided for the reader.

Amazing facts are included in this book such as that at one point mountains of garbage dumps and other problems left only 7,000 acres of wetlands. Because the tide still rises north from the Atlantic ocean, and the Hackensack River flows south, the ecosystem had a chance to recover. The book explains how nature helped heal itself, along with the efforts of humans. ( )

An introduction to the Meadowlands, a wetlands area in New Jersey which has seen a lot of drastic changes over the years, brought to the brink of collapse and then back again.

Meadowlands by Thomas Yezerski, tells the history of the infamous wetland just west of New York City from its pristine, easy relationships with Native Americans ages and ages ago, through its over-development, its poisoning, and finally its rebirth today as a healthy, healing ecosystem. The book is beautifully illustrated with near full-page watercolors of the Meadowlands throughout the ages. Each illustration is ringed by smaller, scientific-style drawings of the flora and fauna that call these wetlands home.
The illustrations are the book’s obvious strength. They are simply wonderous studies of color and light in a natural setting. Each two-page spread show a different time period, making it easy for visual learners to comprehend the slow but steady degradation of the wetlands after the arrival of European imperialists in the 1600s. The text does a great job of providing just the right facts for each stage of the Meadowlands troubled history and addresses the confusing irony of the harm done to the wetlands when they began to get cleaned up; people wanted to live there, and so rather than poisoned wetlands, there were all of a sudden almost no wetlands. As a read aloud, something about it didn’t work. It was definitely too high for my Kindergartners, although by having as an objective teaching them what pollution is and can do helped keep them engaged. There is a brief author’s note which provides a bit more information but could have been much more in depth. As well are a short list of books and a few websites. Overall a good book, but don’t use it in class without a plan first, it’s complicated. ( )

This book begins by describing the flat wet place in New Jersey that you can see from the Empire State Building in New York City. This place is called the Meadowlands and it used to be filled with plants, birds, deer, turtles, squash, flowers, and many other things. The Lenni Lenape people lived there, then the explorers came and began to start developing on it. This began a large stretch of time where people did not care about the Meadowlands or the creatures that lived there. It became a garbage dump, and one of the worst places in America. Then people began caring about the Meadow lands, the stopped dumping trash in it. They started leaving it alone and the plants that once lived there started to grow again, bugs and animals came back. Karin went to the Meadowlands on a field trip and learned more about what she and her family could do to help protect the Meadowlands.