The Spirited Review

Window by Jeannie Baker

Jeannie Baker's Window begins with a young baby resting in his mother's arms as she gazes out into wilderness. The boy grows, and the wilderness is replaced by a few homes, then a suburb, then a city, until he moves away with a new family of his own. The closing image is of the boy grown, holding his own child in his arms and gazing out a new window where once again development is encroaching on wild space.

The view through these windows reflects what we see now all over our world, where forests are falling to ever expanding developments, where urban areas are used, used up, and then abandoned, where folks strike out for a wilder place only to see the wild disappear before their eyes. Baker manages to address the problems of urban and suburban sprawl without using words; in many ways, this book is more powerful because it rests solely on visual imagery. By leaving readers to draw their own conclusions, Window is likely to encourage a thoughtful rather than reactionary approach.

Although Window is a picture book and is often shelved in the preschool/elementary sections, it is probably more appropriate for older children, teens and adults. It is a story that begs conversation about what is happening to the land and why, and may well leave a more lasting impression just because it requires this kind of active reading. Children whose developmental capacities do not yet permit them to address complex questions or to comprehend contradictory needs may find Window to be frustrating or depressing; however, a parent who is willing to work through the implications of the images during reading time may well be able to share it with a younger child.

Window is unique because although interested readers can find texts that posit any number of arguments about how to protect, use, and live as members of this earth, few works actually break us through to the wordless place that comes before the arguments, allowing us to expand our established thinking patterns. In a time when we seem to need such a major readjustment of our awareness, books and other works of art that help us to repattern our thinking are very valuable. After all, when we are out with the earth rather than barricaded inside our human made environments, it is the preverbal experience that demands our first attention, and while we need analytic thought to help us reconstruct our culture, if we are to be earth-centered then it is in the preverbal earth that we must base our self-design. Window is a lens to our changing lands; without words it still calls us to question how to live harmoniously with the earth.

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