If it counts as brainwashing to share a message with young people that they should care about the planet we depend on, then let’s brainwash away.
     Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax may aim to use our relationship with nature as grist for a morality tale (as Shel Silverstein did earlier with The Giving Tree), but Nicola Davies’ approach is more in the mode of Robert McCloskey’s Time of Wonder, a classic ode to the changing of the seasons at Penobscot Bay. Find someone who objects to Davies’ description of pond dipping for newts, and we’re truly worse off than we thought.