My five year old son spends his days pretending to be a park ranger, so we found this book for him to help him learn more about what park rangers do. The book is pretty good, and we're sure glad it exists, because it's the only one we found. It includes lots of details about the various activities that a ranger does. But I do wish a better book existed. This one is focused on a park ranger at Fire Island National Seashore on Long Island, and the book makes it sounds like a very urban environment. The ranger spends her days dealing with campers, horses, deer, fishermen, boaters, beachcombers, hunters, and school children. And it's just a small 20,000 acre park, which means 50 of them could fit inside Glacier National Park! I wish there was a children's book that talked about the experience of rangers in the Rocky Mountains -- building trails, backpacking in the wilderness, monitoring wildfires, doing controlled burns, tracking wildlife, dealing with problem bears, monitoring the health of the forests, search & rescue, interpretation programs, etc. That's the type of experience that would really engage a young reader that hopes to be a park ranger, and it is more representative of what rangers do around here.
interesting look at rangers for young children
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 19 years ago
This is a book for young children about rangers in our National Parks. This book follows the day of a ranger as she does her duty. (For those of you "in the know" about the NPS, the ranger profiled is a seasonal law enforcement ranger, but the book covers fire and interpretation/education too). There is a picture of a ranger on a page, with a one page "chapter" on the facing page. The "chapters" are: People & Nature Together, Ready for Anything, In the Tower, Patrolling the Beach, Many Ways to Get Around, Ranger to the Rescue, Camping & Teaching, Learning about Wildlife, A Piece of History, and Protecting the Land. It is an informative and interesting read. The pictures are great; they show many aspects of the ranger's job. It's an interesting career that children are usually curious about.
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