Book Challenge: Days 15 & 16

Day 15/20 -- Silent Spring Rachel Carson 1962

When Silent Spring by Rachel Carson was first published, I was just 11 years old, so I doubt if I read it then. It might have even been an assigned reading, which I’m trying to avoid in these posts, but whenever I read it, the impact was sudden and meaningful. Being something of a loner as a kid, I loved to ride my bike to a nearby creek and waterfall where the city kept the grass well mowed and willow trees and birches dotted the 4-5 block length of the creek where I climbed trees, walked barefoot across the little waterfall, read books under the willows, and watched birds. My other favorite place was along that same creek, which happened to run past the library. This area behind the library was more heavily wooded, but it was a wonderful place to take a just-checked-out book and read.

So, when I read Carson’s book about the overuse of pesticides, especially DDT, and their threat to the natural world, even linking its use to cancer in humans, I was saddened and horrified. The idea that adults were poisoning the world where I played made me all the more rebellious and angry. Carson, with a background in marine biology (for which she took some flack when the book was published) researched the use of pesticides, especially DDT, for several years before publishing Silent Spring. In fact, in the late 50s, cranberries were found to contain toxic levels of aminotriazole (known to be a carcinogen) and were banned from sale. She did not advocate the banning of DDT but argued that even if DDT had no toxic side effects, the overuse of such products caused their targets to become immune, requiring ever more lethal and toxic concentrations of those pesticides. Her research clearly showed the synthetic pesticide-cancer link for probably the first time, a very controversial stance. Critics, especially the chemical companies, were damning of her background, her research, and her conclusions. Carson and her associates even worried about being sued for libel, but Carson was undergoing radiation therapy for breast cancer, which had metastasized, so supporters were recruited to defend the book and its conclusions. After a year, the criticism generally abated, in part due to the book’s selection as Book-of-the-Month, a positive editorial in The New York Times, and serialization in Audubon Magazine.

This was the beginning of the popularization of the environmental movement. Another argument Carson makes in her book is that, at the time, the USDA regulated both the agricultural industry and the use of pesticides, seen by Carson as a conflict of interest. In 1970, during the Nixon administration, the Environmental Protection Agency was formed, and under the leadership of Willian Ruckelshaus, the phase-out of DDT was begun. Al Gore wrote an introduction to the 1992 edition of Silent Spring. Environmentalism had graduated from rabble-rousing to a government sanctioned movement. Carson died in 1974 after fighting cancer for 14 years.

Day 16/20 -- The Incredible Journey, Sheila Burnford – 1961

The last few books have been a bit “heavy,” so today, I want to lighten things up a bit. This book was published in 1961 but became popular when Disney released a movie of the same name in 1963 when I was 12. By way of background, in addition to my love of books about animals, I had a Chihuahua/fox terrier cross (now often referred to as a Cherrier) who was my constant companion. Tina joined our house about the same time the movie came out, the closest thing to what might have been called a “rescue” back then. Her mother the terrier was impregnated by an escape artist Chihuahua, caught by the local dog catcher (who paid the farmer to use a bit of his farm as the “dog pound”). I had what might have been an unnatural fear that my animals would be lost, so much so that I taught a parakeet our phone number, in case he ever flew away.

Tina, the Cherrier,
dressed up in doll's clothes.

Scottish writer Sheila Burnford based the animal characters on pets she and her husband had while living in Canada, a young Labrador retriever, an old Bull Terrier, and a Siamese cat, who were all bonded. In the book, the animals are left in the care of a family friend when their own family travels to England. When the caretaker goes on a hunting trip and the animals are missing, the caretaker’s housekeeper assumes the animals went on the hunting trip, too. However, the three pets, having been left alone, set out to find their own home 300 miles away through the Canadian wilderness. They meet mean dogs, bears, a lynx and mean people, but they also meet people who help them, such as removing porcupine quills from the Lab’s muzzle, until they finally make it home. The book is often considered a children’s book, but Burnford claims she didn’t write it as such. Another movie was made & released in 1993 (Homeward Bound: An Incredible Journey), but it changes the breeds and dynamics of the three pets, along with some of their adventures, which really made me angry, so I refused to see it.

By the way, Tina never ran away from home, but my dad gave her to his secretary when I left for college when Tina was about 9 or 10, which was a sore spot between us from then on.