I Want To Be a River

When he is asked by his teacher, young Abel says he wants to be a river when he grows up. This immediately concerns his fellow classmates who describe to him the various ways he would change if he did become a river, which Abel deflects at every turn and turns any negative into a positive. In the end, when the classmates describe the garbage and pollution Abel would experience, he turns quiet and begins to cry which moves his classmates telling Abel that they will make sure he remains clean by picking up trash and keeping him clean. The book ends with others in the class dreaming of what they could become — a desert, mountains, clouds, and more. It is hard to get a true message from this book, and the art does not help much at all. It feels like an environmental book but only reads that way at the end. Instead, it reads as more of a young kid having an impossible dream and the rest only following along once they accidentally hurt his feelings.