...Hannah Muller ENVR 102 Book Report For this book report, I read Teaching the Trees by Joan Maloof. Joan Maloof studied Plant Science at the University of Delaware, Environmental Science at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore, and Ecology at the University of Maryland College Park. Maloof is a professor at Salisbury University who teaches biology and environmental studies at Salisbury University. Aside from being a professor, Maloof is a biologist. She was always very interested in forests so from very early on Maloof has been exploring forests all over the eastern United States. She puts a lot of focus on the intertwined connections between specific tree species and the specific animals and insects that need to tree to live and in turn the tree needs them as well. Maloof possesses great enthusiasm for the woods and everything that they contain and is working on developing networking old growth forests across the United States. Teaching the Trees starts out with Joan Maloof saying how we would lose the “Magical Web” of relationships between organisms and trees (Maloof xiii). She begins talking about the services that trees provide for us. She also talks about how the benefits of trees equal healthier air for us to breathe. Japanese researchers have even found that there are 120 chemical compounds in mountain forest air that are good for us (Maloof 3). Inhaling this air can even be cancer preventing. Perhaps by trying to save the forests we are actually trying to save...
Words: 1949 - Pages: 8
...Women can undertake a journey for many reasons: to escape, to seek a new way of life, to find adventure, to find love, to discover oneself or to simply keep moving. In the novel The Bean Trees by Barabara Kingsolver, Taylor the main character sets off on a journey for all these reasons. On her journey to self-discovery Taylor Greer manages to overcome her weaknesses The beans that are continually revealed throughout the novel represent Taylor’s life. The earliest mention of the beans took place when Taylor takes a close look at the reality of her life. “I had never done anything more interesting for a living than… picking bugs off somebody’s bean vines for a penny a piece.” (Pg 4) The beans so far are a symbol of Taylor’s weaknesses, as she and the beans are both of poor quality. Gradually, the beans are becoming of some significance in the novel, since they are truly beginning to echo Taylor’s life. Just as the beans did, Taylor begun her life without a great deal of impact on anyone, only to come plowing up and impact people where they did not expect it. At the end of the novel, the reader again encounters the beans for the last time. Although this time, the reader captures the complete significance of the beans. The beans, symbolism reflects Taylor’s development throughout her life perfectly. Taylor grew in poor soil and without the influence of the people, whom act like rhizobia that she encounters, she would have never been able to fight her weaknesses and realize her...
Words: 1032 - Pages: 5
...The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver, begins when Taylor (whose real name is Marietta) decides that it's time to leave Pittman, Kentucky, where she lives with her mother, and make something of herself. She buys a 1955 Volkswagen and embarks on a personal journey of self-discovery, leaving everything behind, including her name. When her car runs out of gas in Taylorville, Illinois, she decides that her new name will be Taylor. From that point on, she is known as Taylor Greer. In the middle of Oklahoma, on land owned by the Cherokee Nation, Taylor's car breaks down. Taylor stops to have it repaired and to get something to eat at a restaurant. Her life changes dramatically when, sitting in her car and ready to leave the restaurant and continue...
Words: 1628 - Pages: 7
...Summer Reading Book Project-Book Report The book The Bean Trees, by Barbara Kingsolver, is about a young girl from rural Kentucky, who decides to leave Kentucky for good and go on a journey, but soon finds herself the mother of a baby girl. This young girl is Marietta Greer, but on her journey, changed her name to Taylor Greer because of a promise she made to herself to change her name to wherever the gas tank ran out. As Taylor was heading west, her car broke down in the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma and outside of an old bar, a woman claiming to be the sister of the baby’s mother, left the baby in Taylor’s care with the only information being that she was born in a Plymouth car. Taylor names the baby Turtle and brings her along on her journey and Turtle was discovered to have been abused and sexually molested. Eventually they make it to Tucson, Arizona, where Taylor meets Mattie, a kind woman who is the owner of an auto-repair shop is Jesus is Lord Used Tires. Taylor meets and becomes great friends with Lou Ann Ruiz, another Kentuckian living in Tucson who was abandoned by her husband and has a baby boy. They meet Estevan and Esperanza, a married couple who fled from Guatemala in order to save the lives of the 17 union members but had to leave their child, who looked like Turtle, behind. Mattie, who has been helping illegal immigrants by providing them shelter, becomes worried about Estevan and Esperanza’s safety, so Taylor decides to transport them to another sanctuary for illegal...
Words: 1520 - Pages: 7
...Allaina Boggs, period 4 14 October 2014 Mr. Archibald Eng 10H: Outside Reading Response Annotated Bibliography Kingsolver, Barbara. The Bean Trees. New York: Harper & Row, 1988. Print. Marietta Greer, who goes by Missy and is later know as Taylor, embarks on an unforgettable journey from Kentucky, to Oklahoma, to Arizona, and finally back to Oklahoma again. Taylor desperately wants to escape the “regular life” of a Kentucky teenager which is getting married young, having a teenage pregnancy, and dropping out of high school only to have a horrid future; so, she sets out in her ’55 Volkswagen bug, stopping wherever her car broke down. However, during her first pit stop at a bar/coffee shop in Oklahoma, an old Cherokee woman lays a baby in the seat of Taylor’s car and tells her to take care of it. They stay at the Broken Arrow Motor Lodge for a while, where Taylor...
Words: 501 - Pages: 3
...Angelica Acevedo Professor Coogan Introduction to Fiction September 24, 2014 Barbara Kingsolver: The Bean Trees The Bean Trees is a novel about a young girl who becomes a young woman by overcoming a series of trials that life throws at her. Part of those “trials” is taking care of a three...
Words: 1001 - Pages: 5
...In The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver Taylor refuses to remain in her hometown forever. The town of Pittman, Kentucky only leads to teenage pregnancy and motherhood until death. To not fall into the majority of Pittman’s stereotypical girl image, she goes on a road trip west. Just when she thinks she is home free, Taylor is left with an abandoned three-year-old American Indian girl. Taylor ends up as an unplanned single mother. Taylor has had many significant changes through the book that will equally impact her life. One major one is her realization of how she needs to be more courageous in life. While doing so she learns to be more responsible, and also learns about the power of friendship and to have a strong bond with the people who surround...
Words: 743 - Pages: 3
...When reading The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver there are many moments Kingsolver goes against the nuclear family idea that the American society has formed. A nuclear family involves a father, a mother, and children living together. The biological mother is often viewed as the natural caregiver, and the father is viewed as the provider. However in The Bean Trees this is not the case. Instead Kingsolver has us rethink the definition of family Kingsolver biggest non-nuclear relationship is between Taylor and Turtle “ “Are you saying you want to give me this child?” “Yes” ” (Kingsolver 18). This is a definite non-nuclear family. Not only is it just Taylor and Turtle, but Turtle isn’t even biologically Taylor’s. Also there is the fact...
Words: 297 - Pages: 2
...Although the plots of their novel might not be similar, John Steinbeck in Of Mice and Men and Barbara Kingsolver in The Bean Trees both discuss social injustice. Throughout the novel main characters experience or see social injustice occur. Steinbeck and Kingsolver write about social injustice to educate readers and to show them that social injustice could happen to anyone around them. In the Bean trees, reader's encounter injustice through the lens of Taylor Greer who is experiencing all these things for the first time. At first when Taylor is suddenly forced to deal with responsibilities of motherhood, she discovers that the child that she was taking care of was abused. Taylor is shocked to a great deal because she can’t believe someone...
Words: 534 - Pages: 3
...Lindsey Matthiesen November 3, 2015 Throughout Kingsolver’s novel The Bean Trees, examples are shown of how important the name someone posses is. First, Taylor wants to change her destiny so she changes her name. Second, Esperanza’s name shows the course her life is going to take.An insight on destiny can be whown through a person’s name. Taylor and Esperanza’s struggle with identity shows the importance of naming which proves that destiny is chosen by the name possessed by an individual. When Taylor changes her name she knows she will be changing her destiny, which shows her struggle with identity. In the beginning of The Bean Trees Taylor changes her name from Missy to Taylor. When she leaves Pittman there are two things she states...
Words: 578 - Pages: 3
...Barbara Kingsolver uses the motif of mother-child relationships to accentuate the value of parenting in her novel, The Bean Trees. Main character Taylor Greer drives across the country in search of a bigger direction than small town country life. Her biggest fear was becoming barefoot and pregnant in Kentucky with no future prospects. Realizing she needed to find an escape, she buys a car and takes off in search of a new world. In the process of her transcontinental voyage, she becomes the caretaker of a young Indian child that redefines and expands her thoughts on parenting and family. This youngster came as a complete surprise to Taylor, who was left in shock and ousted 9 months of priming for the toddler. Finding solitude in a new town,...
Words: 356 - Pages: 2
...The bean tree Through an analogy of the book, one realizes that human beings partake in a series of hidden or open actions, for the sake of helping the rest of their environment. In the book by Barbara Kingsolver, the main protagonist acts out in response to the hard times that she faces and those of others in her surroundings. She first displays this through her choice to move away from her small town. She recognizes that living in that town will only limit her. Therefore, she takes measures to protect her against circumstances that would have otherwise tied her to the town. The second instance of her way of helping others takes place when she took in Turtle from a stranger (Kingsolver, 98). Although she has avoided pregnancy, she readily accepts the child without contemplating of the future consequences. Turtle has a rocky past full of abuse and Taylor takes her in. Finally, Taylor identifies with the pain that both Estevan and Esperanza faced in Guatemala and in the USA. When their life is at risk from immigration officials, she offers to transport them to another illegal immigrant safe zone in Oklahoma. For Esperanza, one instance of her feminine virtues in use to help others takes place at a legal attorney’s office. The attorney, Mr. Armistead, was a recommendation for Taylor to help her maneuver round the legal system as she sought to adopt Turtle. Esperanza plays her part in selling the story that helped in the adoption of Taylor. She does weeps convincingly but deep down...
Words: 629 - Pages: 3
...When my mom was expecting my older brother she was frightened because she felt like she wasn’t ready to be a mom at a young age and my dad felt the same because they were still teenagers trying to figure out their own lives. As the months passed my mom was getting so much help from the community and my dad’s parents so they felt like they had so much supporter that made them feel prepared and ready for what life had in hands for them. Now twenty years later they are living the life they have wanted. The Bean Trees by barbara Kingsolver also deals with having moments of difficulties and drastic changes in life even without you planning those changes but by having those changes you begin to go with the flow in order to continue with your life....
Words: 1479 - Pages: 6
...Kingsolver’s books have been read by many readers. She is a well-known author with multiple books, and numerous people have written compare and contrasting essays on her novels. This essay will compare the setting, characters, and the tone of Kingsolver’s “The Bean Trees” and “Pigs in Heaven.” First, Kingsolver’s novel “The Bean Trees” begins in Pittman County, Kentucky (Kingsolver 1-2). Throughout the story the primary setting changes to Tuscan, Arizona as Taylor decides she’s ready to go out on her own. Then in “Pigs in Heaven” the setting begins in Kentucky and then carries on throughout four states: Arizona, Nevada, Wyoming, and Oklahoma. The setting in these novels are similar as they both include Kentucky and Arizona. Second, Kingsolver...
Words: 353 - Pages: 2
...The Key to Being a Good Mother Motherhood is an unconditional love that every mother provides to their child. It is a common motif throughout The Bean Trees, written by Barbara Kingsolver. Lou Ann, one of the main characters, is a single mother because her husband, Angel had left her with no reasons so she has to raise her son Dwayne Ray by herself. Lou Ann had faced multiple challenges, but she came through with the help of her friends and families. Lou Ann is the best mom in the novel. Lou Ann is the best mom because she is determined, thoughtful, and cautious. Lou Ann is a determined person which is a sign of being a good mother. After a while not being employed, Lou Ann decides to look for a job. “On the way home Lou Ann went to the...
Words: 941 - Pages: 4
