Chip the Dam Builder - Book 27

Don't judge me!  I read a children's chapter book called Chip, the Dam Builder.  Let me tell you how it happened.  I was flipping through channels one day and I stumbled upon some news station (C-Span?) covering a National Press Breakfast or something like that.  Their featured speaker was Dr. Ben Carson.  I have a special fondness for Dr. Carson.  Part of the time I lived in Baltimore, I was down the street from the Johns Hopkins Campus.  Dr. Carson is a local celebrity in those parts.  I remember going to the Baltimore City library and seeing his books and a picture book about him displayed there.  Then a few years ago I watched the movie Gifted Hands which was quite good.

Anyway, I only caught the very last question asked to Dr. Carson.  Someone asked him the single most influential book in his life, after the Bible.  And he answered the funniest answer right away, like he didn't even have to think about it, but he was a little embarrassed:  Chip the Dam Builder.  He gave a quick reason why in the 20 seconds he had left.  He said that he read the book in 5th grade and that was the one that opened up science to him.  The book is a story about a beaver colony led by Chip.  It explains the beaver's life and hardships without anthropomorphizing them too much.  He said that book made him look into other books about science.  Soon he discovered geology and became fascinated by that subject.  Then one day in 5th grade, his teacher began a lesson on rocks and Dr. Carson, who had been a shy, quiet and scared kid up until that moment, suddenly got animated and forgot to be shy.  He happily told the teacher everything about geology that he knew with great enthusiasm.  When Dr. Carson looked around the classroom he saw the kids looking at him with admiration, like, wow that quiet kid knows stuff!  And this is what inspired Dr. Carson to really take school seriously.

Well, I immediately went and looked up Chip the Dam Builder and to my happy surprise it was written by one of my favorite authors as a child, Jim Kjelgaard!  I loved his Big Red and other dog books.  I don't remember reading Chip, but if it was in my local library growing up, I probably did as I think I read every book they had by Kjelgaard.  Suddenly I just had to have Chip myself.  So I bought a copy used through Amazon.

Do they write children's books like this anymore? The book assumes the child is intelligent and can handle literary language.  There is no talking down to them, no cutesy stuff.  There are hardly any pictures, except some simply but lovely black and white illustrations.  It explains what life is like as a beaver:  lots of danger and instinct that drives the beaver to protect his family while also changing the landscape around him.  We learn about all sorts of river and stream life and also the bad and good encounters with man.

I was sad to see that Kjelgaard killed himself in 1959.  How sad.  I would love to know more about him.

Two thumbs up for both a nice nostalgic return to childhood and just a quality book about nature.

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