Green Animation

Eleven environmental cartoons sponsored by the World Wide Fund for Nature (UK) offer a mix of thought-provoking--though occasionally oversimplified--messages about caring for the planet. In the best of these (titles like "Equilibrium" which uses the idea of scales to emphasize the need for a balanced approach to resource use, or "Exhibit A" which features a bleak portrait of a future family wearing oxygen tanks for an afternoon's outing in a pollution-ridden city), the shorts combine winning animation, a good musical background, and a well-imagined parable to suggest the imminent dangers in continued non-sustainable approaches to mining, drilling, and logging the Earth for natural resources. Others, like "Enlightenment," in which a logger cuts down the last tree and becomes a tree himself (a kind of confused environmentalist revenge fantasy inspired perhaps by the classic short "Closed Mondays"), or "Hobby," a flashy but simplistic computer-animated short about a stereotypical capitalist on a holiday fishing trip, don't really measure up. Overall, however, Green Animation would be an effective discussion started for upper elementary audiences and older. Recommended. (R. Pitman)