Chessa Adsit-Morris explores the role of narrative in environmental education, drawing on some extensive researchers and theorists in the field of storytelling. She interprets their ideas to apply to education for sustainability in a classroom setting. There is a consistency in style throughout, with each chapter starting with an abstract, an epigraph, and a colourful visual image that helps the visual learner (like myself) orientate to the ideas that follow. There is a reference list at the end of each chapter to make it more a collection of articles than a book. At the beginning of the book the author quotes a playwright, and this sets the tone for some of her later critique of how environmental education is currently taught in schools in a way that lacks opportunities for children to own the environmental stories of the places in which they live:

The first chapter, ‘How to create human humus instead of human hubris’, helps to define the topics, discussions and research purpose of this text. The author clearly highlights her guidance in philosophical perspectives from the feminist social scientists to whom she refers regularly. Donna Harraway, Karen Barad and Rosi Braidotti are introduced as central influencers, quoted and referenced extensively to build a familiarity with their perspectives throughout the book. The second chapter, ‘A cartographic mapping practice’, enters the analysis of the role of storytelling and narrative in the environmental education domain within the greater ‘map’ of social structures. Adsit-Morris highlights how narratives should be personalised and close to the lived experience to be meaningful. There is the familiar critique of (mostly American-based) historical practices in environmental education that teach only ‘about’ nature, and she considers strategies for teaching ‘in’ and ‘for’, with special consideration for engaging young people. Through a lovely personal narrative and some other reflections, she does capture the vivacity of childhood relationships with the more-than-human world. Recognising the overarching conflicts of capitalism and environmental protection, Adsit-Morris draws on new materialist theories (Braidotti, Reference Braidotti2006), questioning some aspects of rhizomic metaphors presented through Deleuze and Guattari’s (Reference Deleuze and Guattari1987) foundational work in this space. The author is seeking ways to teach that encourage active engagement for students’ learning. She presents some convincing arguments for why educators should consider these alternative strategies.

Chapter 3, ‘Bag-lady storytelling: The carrier-bag theory of fiction as research praxis’, reflects on Le Guin’s (Reference Le Guin1989) metaphors for narrative writing and how these can be applied to modern-day environmental education practices. The author notes the collecting of ideas and stories as a nomadic experience building for effective environmental education in schools. As a teacher, one can identify with this approach as one gathers many items in the carry bag of skills to engage young people in their learning journey. The critique of traditional research methods that rely on scientific method and dismiss an individual’s story-telling does come through. Adsit-Morris suggests that the importance of the individual’s role in ‘sharing, composing and decomposing, experimenting and crafting (p49)’ needs greater highlighting in environmental education practices. These critiques may be valid, but there could have been more explorations of practices in research that do recognise these creative elements in environmental education.

Chapter 4 is where Adsit-Morris’s own narrative capacity shines. She explains her research project as ‘Doing: Exploring the lost streams of Vancouver through eco-art’. With a stunning illustration at the beginning of the chapter, she details the case study where she applied her action research project in an independent Montessori school with a Grade 4/5/6 class and a supportive teacher. She describes how students were encouraged to direct and define the way they explored the lost rivers and how they came up with innovative ideas about how the now disappeared salmon might be reconsidered as part of the Vancouver landscape. Some of the illustrations of eco-art that were developed by the children reinvigorate hope in the capacity of education to be creative and build knowledge. The author’s excitement and enthusiasm for her narrative was inspiring, but I did wonder how far this process could be applied in a system where government tests define the agenda for classroom activities and can limit opportunities for experimentation and creative agency.

This ‘Doing’ is followed by ‘Thinking: A narrative inquiry into possible figurations and multiple modes of ecological thought’. The photographic metaphor of the mossy tree-stump that looks like a dog from a certain angle is used in the first pages. This draws from Donna Harraway’s (Reference Haraway, Grebowicz and Merrick2013) work to effectively explain the multiple viewings one may have of an issue. The strongest argument here is the section of discussion about ‘hyphenated’ ways of thinking. Adsit-Morris explores environmental attitudes through language attributes as part of an emergent gestalt. While the author claims to ‘push, drag, coax, trick, or pull ecological thought outside the boundaries of western metaphysics, outside the territories of systems theory, into the muddy and mucky world of everyday creatures’ (p. 80), I do think this claim falls a little flat. This is mostly because with the intense levels of referencing other people’s ideas and arguments, somehow her own voice is lost in complex theories of others. The ‘doing’ was active and enervating, while the thinking seems to be imposed and unclear in many places. While the summaries of Karen Barad’s (Reference Barad2012) and other authors’ ideas on diffraction and relational disruptions serve as useful reference points for reading, I would have liked to see a clearer analysis of this in the author’s own voice. Again, the personal narratives as semi-autobiography shine through when they are present.

The final chapter returns to discuss how people in societies can ‘Keep the story going for those who come after’, as an urgent call to think and act differently to the established ways. Threading together the feminist and narrative theories previously described, she returns to the analogy of salmon as farmed and free, as controlled or messy in their natural state, as ‘ghosts’ entangled with trees through nitrogen links (p. 129). It is indeed a cobbled, trying to be feral chapter, which takes the reader outside the expected norms of sequenced narrative but (again) draws too heavily on her favourite and multiple other references.

In conclusion, Restorying Environmental Education: Figurations, Fictions and Feral Subjectivities emphasises the importance of putting a filter of narrative over activities in environmental education. My one critique of this book would be that the author relied too much on other people’s words in too many places, so the text appeared like a literature review instead of a strong thesis in the author’s own right. Overall, however, the summaries of work by important authors and theorists in the field of narrative-based research provide a good basis for further reading. Also, the author’s passion and understanding of the field, especially when she moves into her own narration of experiences, is an inspiration for creative teaching with a firm philosophical basis.