2014 Children, Youth and Environments Children, Youth and Environments 24(2), 2014 The Great Outdoors: Advocating for Natural Spaces for Young Children Mary S. Rivkin with Deborah Schein (2014) Washington, D.C.: National Association for the Education of Young Children, 117 pages. $24.99 USD (paperback). ISBN: 978-1-928896-99-9. Disclaimer: When I first sat down to write a review of Mary S. Rivkin’s revised, 2014 edition of The Great Outdoors: Advocating for Natural Spaces for Young Children, I did so outdoors, taking my laptop to the backyard patio to enjoy a beautiful Wisconsin morning. Before long, I was joined by my daughter. As I pondered how best to begin, she announced, “Mom, look. The baby robins have grown.” I glanced up. From the nest in our crabapple tree I could see two rather large, ungainly robin chicks with their mouths open wide, waiting for their parents to return. They were nearly too big for their nest. “I wonder if they’ll fledge this week,” I commented. Then I turned back to my computer. Mary Rivkin’s The Great Outdoors is a scholarly piece of work, deserving of a scholarly review. As a Nature Preschool teacher myself, I recognize its value for all those who work in early childhood and environmental education. How ought to I approach it, then, I thought, in order to give it the kind of serious and thoughtful review it requires? “Mom,” said my daughter again. “There’s a monarch on the milkweed.” This was good news, for the monarch population has been alarmingly low in recent years, and my daughter, a lover of butterflies, is now old enough to worry about this. We watched the monarch drink from the milkweed flowers for a while, and then she asked with excitement, “I wonder if it laid any eggs?” As the monarch flew off, my daughter hurried over and began searching among the leaves. “Anything there?” I asked. She frowned. “I just see a big old milkweed bug. They eat monarch eggs, don’t they?” “They often do,” I replied. She frowned again. “That’s a tough one,” she decided. “Because I guess they have to eat too.” A moment later she nudged my shoulder. “Do you hear that funny little chickadee?” I listened. “It sounds like an angry squeak,” she said. “Do you see it Book Review: The Great Outdoors: Advocating for Natural Spaces for Young Children 245 up there? It’s all puffed up on the fence, like it’s really mad at us for being out here. I wonder if that means there are babies nearby?” At this point, two things were clear. First, my daughter obviously wanted me to stop writing and notice what was happening around us; and second, Mary Rivkin’s main premise in The Great Outdoors had just been proven in under five minutes. Children, indeed all humans, are connected to the natural world. Their imaginations are inspired and energized by nature; their understanding of place and community are tied to nature; and they not only need, but deserve, and ought to be guaranteed, time spent in nature in an ongoing and meaningful way. As Rivkin writes in her opening chapter, “young children have always used the outdoors for exploring, creating, inventing. We observe them in their play and wonder, what are they thinking and feeling? What will they remember from these times?” (4). The Great Outdoors: Advocating for Natural Spaces for Young Children is an updated version of what many consider to be a classic and important piece of research. Originally written in 1995, Rivkin’s earlier edition made a strong and convincing case that children deserve to spend time playing and exploring in natural settings. These days, those of us who work with children know this to be true, for we see it daily, or else feel it instinctively. What we need now is not convincing ourselves, so much as the tools and the resources to convince those around us. The strength in this revised edition lies not in telling us what we already know (who but the most stubborn would deny that the physical health of children could be improved by running and playing...