Thursday, May 31, 2012

Bronx Zoo commissions play that attempts to recruit children into green cult; six-year-old girl accuses neighbors of "hurting the polar bears" by using the lights in their apartment

Polar Bear Play's Summer Tour Aims to Teach Kids About Climate Change - DNAinfo.com

NEW YORK — A children’s theater company in Turtle Bay will tour the city this summer with a production that blends cute and cuddly polar bears with the more serious subject of climate change.

Making Books Sing, which uses theater to promote children’s literacy and social development, will present “If You Really Love Polar Bears” at 22 New York Public Library branches in The Bronx, Manhattan and Staten Island.

The musical follows Patchy, a little boy who loves polar bears, as he learns what he can do to help save the earth and what climate change could mean for animal habitats.

“Kids can sometimes feel like [climate change is] such a bigger topic than they are," said Brooke Boertzel, director of education at Making Books Sing and the show's co-author.  “We try to take an empowering slant that there actually is a lot kids can do to contribute and to be environmentally conscious.”

The show aims to highlight the various small ways children can change their habits and conserve energy. It has been performed at the Bronx Zoo and at several schools throughout the five boroughs, and Boertzel said the response so far has been overwhelmingly positive.

In one instance, she received an email from the father of a 6-year-old girl who came home from the show and gave her neighbors a talking to after seeing all the lights in their apartment switched on.

“She started yelling out, 'You’re hurting the polar bears! You need to turn off all your lights!” Boertzel recalled with a laugh. “There is a link there that it is connecting.”

3 comments:

chris y said...

A quote on cosmophobia by David Morrison, NASA Ames Research Center, in a NYT column by Maureen Dowd, 5/31/2012, also applies to climophobia in spades-

'People trying to make money are ginning up the hoax, he said.'
"The worst thing is they really do frighten children, and it's evil to make up lies to scare children," he said. "I have at least one email a day from a kid who says he can't sleep. Some are threatening suicide. I heard about two sets of parents who talked about killing their children and themselves before the date, and a girl hanged herself in England in the fall, worrying over 2012."

Hugh K said...

"...cuddly polar bears..."

Wow! That is quite a fantastical description of an animal widely known to eat their cubs. Talk about delusional...
I hope the Bronx Zoo has some kind of disclaimer in their play - Children and assorted adult eco-nuts should not under any circumstance attempt to cuddle with polar bears.

Anonymous said...

Hi Tom,

Based on your comments I have a feeling that you haven't actually viewed this show and are speculating and making claims based on an article you stumbled across online. Obviously, no one is advocating to cuddle with polar bears as that would be an incredibly silly decision, and one that might be difficult to make anyway considering we live in North America (unless of course a 6 year old got loose at the Bronx Zoo and decided to jump into the polar bear pen!) However, one reason polar bears have actually been "eating their cubs" is because they have no ice to stand on in order to hunt seals and are thus starving. Note, the ice in the arctic is melting due to global warming. Also, I don't view the term "eco-nut" in a pejorative context, since it is all the "eco-nuts" who are working very diligently to find alternative energies and ways to save this planet, and of course educate our children so they can be contributing members of society. Of course, the last thing we would want is make up "lies to scare our children" which is why I've told my kids the truth: Every christmas, a large bearded man in a red suit squeezes his way through our chimney, sneaks into the living room, and leaves presents under the tree. Anyway, I just wanted to put this out there, I look forward to more of your reviews on topics which don't best appeal to your intellect.