Craft a Book Review

Lesson about Writing a Book Review about WALDEN

     Walden  is the free ebook available at this link  http://thoreau.eserver.org/walden00.html

      Walden is a nature journal by Henry David Thoreau. Writing in an online class is just like the style of Walden. We are essentially following the writing plan of Thoreau's  Walden.  Pick a special place and write about themes such as family, nature, music, art, or service or travel. Narrative or story is an important part of paragraph development.  

     Walden opens with a simple announcement that Thoreau spent two years in Walden Pond, near Concord, Massachusetts, living a simple life supported by no one. He says that he now resides among the civilized again; the episode was clearly both experimental and temporary. The first chapter, “Economy,” is a manifesto of social thought and meditations on domestic management, and in it Thoreau sketches out his ideals as he describes his pond project. He devotes attention to the skepticism and wonderment with which townspeople had greeted news of his project, and he defends himself from their views that society is the only place to live.

     He recounts the circumstances of his move to Walden Pond, along with a detailed account of the steps he took to construct his rustic habitation and the methods by which he supported himself in the course of his wilderness experiment. It is a chapter full of facts, figures, and practical advice, but also offers big ideas about the claims of individualism versus social existence, all interspersed with evidence of scholarship and a propensity for humor.

     Thoreau devotes great attention to nature, the passing of the seasons, and the creatures with which he shares the woods. He describes the habits of a panoply of animals, from woodchucks to partridges. Some he endows with a larger meaning, often spiritual or psychological. The hooting loon that plays hide and seek with Thoreau, for instance, becomes a symbol of the playfulness of nature and its divine laughter at human endeavors. Another example of animal symbolism is the full-fledged ant war that Thoreau stumbles upon, prompting him to meditate on human warfare. Thoreau’s interest in animals is not exactly like the naturalist’s or zoologist’s.

     A transcendentalist, Thoreau does not observe and describe them neutrally and scientifically, but gives them a moral and philosophical significance, as if each has a distinctive lesson to teach him. 

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