Just a Dream by VanAllsburg, Chris

Recommended for Grades 3 and 4

• Title: Just a Dream
• Author: VanAllsburg, Chris
• ISBN: 0590451804
• ISBN 13: 978-0590451802

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Young Walter is a careless boy who tosses rubbish on the grass, thinks recycling is a waste of time, and mocks his neighbor, Rose, for her delight in the tree she has just received for her birthday. Walter longs to live in the future, which he imagines to be full of robots, tiny personal planes, and machines that make life easier. One night when he falls asleep, his wish to live in the future comes true. However, his dreams carry him into a future not filled with the robots and machines he believes will make life better, but instead ravaged by the careless mistakes of the past. Walter travels in his sleep to the midst of an endless garbage dump on his own street, to a tree in a forest that is about to be cut down, to the top of a smokestack belching pollution, to the middle of a fishless sea, and to other places that show him possible negative versions of the future. When he wakes up, he is a changed boy. On his birthday, he asks for a tree, which is planted near Rose's birthday tree. When he falls asleep that night, he dreams of the future again. In this dream, he is shown a different version?instead of a world of robots and machines, laundry hangs on the line, a man mows his lawn with a motorless mower, and Walter is delighted to see that the two little trees have grown tall and strong in the clean air.

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