The Emerald Forest, Dir. John Boorman, Embassy Pictures Corporation, 1985. (113 min. VHS / DVD) An engineer moves his family to the Amazon rainforest in Brazil to build a huge dam in the river. His young son wanders off and is raised by a community of indigenous people in the rainforest. By the time the father finds him some ten years later, he has fully acculturated to the lifestyle of the indigenous people, calling the chief, "father." His own father, who realizes that even though he has finally found his son, it is not so simple as merely taking him back to his family in the city. He is faced with the dilemma of finishing the dam project, and burying the very land where his son and his community live in the rainforest or abandoning the dam that he has spent ten years building and saving the land.
Finding Forrester
, Dir. Gus Van Sant, Columbia Pictures, 2000. (133 min.VHS / DVD) Based on an unlikely relationship between a hip, urban, African-American teen-age boy with a penchant for basketball and writing, and a reclusive, sixties-something Euro-American, Pulitzer Prize winning writer who becomes the former's mentor. Both have a lot to learn about the lifestyles,
places
, and fears of the other.
Gutherie, Donna, Nancy Bentley, Kathy Keck Arnsteen.
The Young Author's Do-It-Yourself Book
. Brookfield, CT: The Millbrook Press, 1994. This marvelous book takes students step-by-step through the process of assembling a storybook, or in the case of this unit, an alphabet book.
Mamis, Josh, editor.
Greater New Haven Visitor's Guidebook
. New Haven, CT: Greater New Haven Convention and Visitors Bureau, 2002. This book gives an overview of the highlights of greater New Haven including: historical, cultural, outdoor, accommodations, shopping, dining, and nightlife, with a road map of Greater New Haven, and a detailed street map of the original nine squares that make up downtown New Haven.
Marshall, James Vance.
Walkabout
. Littleton, MA: Sundance Publishing, 1959. An urban girl and her brother, thirteen and eight respectively, from South Carolina in the 1950's are the only survivors of a cargo plane crash in the Australian Outback. Their survival depends on a chance encounter with a thirteen year-old Aborigine on his walkabout. Abandoning his walkabout, which contradicts his community's tradition, he teaches the children survival skills and leads them in the direction of modern civilization. But his encounter with the children proves fatal to the Aborigine when he feels rejected by one of the children.
Walkabout
, Dir. Nicolas Roeg, 20th Century Fox, 1971. (100 min. VHS / DVD) Based on the novella by the same name, by James Vance Marshall. Two urban Australian children abandoned in the Australian Outback meet up with an Aborigine on his walkabout, his rite of passage. Going against his community's traditions, he abandons his walkabout to teach them the skills they need to survive in the Outback and he leads them out of the wilderness, but as the result of the encounter, he loses his own will to live.