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Gaia Girls: Enter The Earth Enter The Earth is the enchanting first volume of Gaia Girls, a planned seven-book series by Lee Welles detailing the adventures of several young girls with a rather remarkable talent: they are able to communicate with Gaia, the living embodiment of the Earth. This first volume deals specifically with a girl named Elizabeth, living on a farm in upstate New York, where the agricultural community is being threatened by a large-scale factory farming enterprise. While the book is by no means trying to be Harry Potter, there is inevitably a certain element of magic to the central character's abilities. This is contrasted by the world around them, in which things are extremely ordinary in every way; it's the real world out there. |
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Welles does a fantastic job of making us empathize with Elizabeth as she is pulled through many of the emotional ups and downs of childhood itself. The book twists and turns through triumph and loss, happiness and despair, never losing sight of the mission: to entertain and educate.
The illustrations in the book all form pieces of a puzzle to be solved, one of several games hosted on the book's website at GaiaGirls.com - the puzzles are somewhat simplistic, however, since they are designed for younger readers.
The books are aimed at "ages 9 and up", and are thus written in a very accessible style legible by younger readers, but are not "dumbed down". As such, Enter The Earth can provide a great deal of entertainment for any adult willing to give the book a chance. There's a certain magic to the book itself, though - at least for a short while, Enter the Earth can help you recapture the childlike sense of wonder at Nature itself.