by Mark Zeiger

Created on: December 08, 2008   Last Updated: January 15, 2009

"Green writing," is becoming increasingly popular. Public awareness of our environment, and our impact upon it, is growing steadily, and authors with many points of view are providing educational and entertaining reading to encourage that growth.

Ecological writing takes many different forms. Four such books that have caught and held one's attention recently fall into the broad categories of how-to, educational, and even fiction.

Eating locally is on the rise. Perhaps in reaction to increasing globalization, there is a growing movement to return to an older way of eating, relying more on what is grown and produced locally rather than foods from other regions, continents, and hemispheres. Becoming a "locavore" is seen as a way to lessen our impact on the environment, support our communities rather than global corporations, and to take a more active role in choosing the foods we eat. Two recent books on the subject of eating locally compliment each other well. These are Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle (HarperCollins) and Plenty: Eating Locally on the 100-Mile Diet by Alisa Smith and J.B. Mackinnon (Three Rivers Press).

Besides a common subject, the books share an engaging format. Kingsolver's book was team-written with her husband and older daughter. Her younger daughter contributed as well, but was too young to sign a publishing contract. Smith and Mackinnon are a married couple, and wrote Plenty in alternating point-of-view chapters.

Both books describe a year of living locally, tracing each family's adventures (and misadventures) in restricting their diet to only what can be obtained from their area. Each book provides strong arguments for local eating, backed up with interesting and sometimes appalling facts and figures showing just how wasteful our modern food economy has become. Both are well written and very entertaining to the point of being the type of book one would read out loud to one's family. Kingsolver's comical passages on turkey breeding stand out particularly!

The main difference between the two books is their approach to eating locally. The Kingsolvers raised much of their own food on their farm in Appalachia, while the urban Smith-Mackinnon household became "hunter/gatherers," going out into the surrounding countryside of British Columbia, Canada to obtain local food, mostly by purchasing it. The value of each of these books to the reader depends on which lifestyle, region, and resource set is closer to one's own. Both books provide

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