The National Parks

Starred review from May 1, 2022

Gr 5-7-Trotting in Bigfoot as tour guide and spokescryptid for all of our national parks, monuments, and historical sites, Koch offers both a general celebration of their wonders and value and a history of how they came to be. This begins with the forcible removal of the indigenous Miwoks from the Ahwahnee valley (later renamed "Yosemite") in 1851 and continues on to the reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone in the 1990s. Koch includes nuanced introductions to significant figures and visionaries of the past, from Presidents Grant and Roosevelts to John Muir (an overt racist, for all his good works) and Marjory Stoneman Douglas. Readers will come away understanding how the parks and other preserves as we know them today are the products of often violent struggles between competing interests: native populations and would-be settlers; commercial exploiters and preservers of wild places; strict conservationists and officials bent on improving access with new roads and facilities. Brightly colored cartoon art in sequential panels featuring animated people (notably an excitable Teddy Roosevelt, who positively bounds across some pages) and wild creatures livens up the substantial informational load, which is presented almost entirely as dialogue and capped by a time line to 2019 and a short list of print resources. VERDICT Middle grade readers visiting any of the hundreds of national park sites will find their enjoyment and appreciation of the experience much enhanced by this graphic overview.-John Edward Peters

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May 15, 2022
Get your park passports stamped! Wisecracking Bigfoot (who in this book symbolizes the National Parks) and Eagle narrate this in-depth exploration of the "recreational areas, historic sites, monuments, landscapes, seashores, [and] ecosystems" that make up the parks system. The story begins in 1850 with Yosemite, then a state park and America's first large nature park. When Eagle points out the land had been the home of the Ahwahnechee, Bigfoot explains that "early Anglo-Americans didn't see it that way" and "arrogantly believed they had the authority to tell all Indigenous people where and how to live!" These attitudes unfortunately continued. The complicated politics and practical aspects of preservation versus conservation are anchored in time as different presidents approve new parks. Koch covers Lewis and Clark; John Muir; the Buffalo Soldiers, who experienced racism as they enforced rules at Yosemite; journalist Virginia McClurg, who took a stand against the looting of Mesa Verde; Marjory Stoneman Douglas, who advocated for the Everglades to be made into a national park; and women who worked in the parks as rangers, naturalists, and cultural demonstrators in the 1920s. Digitally created illustrations portray contemporary park visitors as diverse. Sassy guides lead readers through a witty yet complicated history of the national parks. (preface, afterword, further research, timeline) (Nonfiction comic. 10-14)

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