Review by Karen Austin

(CNN) -- Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring" appealed to our good sense to protect our planet from disastrous pollution. In "The Sense of Wonder", Carson appeals to our senses, urging us to savor the natural world with a child's excitement, the "true instinct for what is beautiful and awe-inspiring." Her spare text is lushly complemented by Nick Kelsh's photography, which puts the colors and textures of the Maine woods and shore into our hands.

Carson's great-nephew Roger was not quite three years old when she first took him out to explore the natural world of her Maine summer home. On their expeditions she built a store of memories and impressions grounded in the wonder and delight of discovery they felt. Before and during the time she wrote "Silent Spring", she felt drawn to write a book guiding adults to foster an appreciation of nature among children. "If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder," she wrote, "he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement and mystery of the world we live in."

The "wonder book", as Carson called it, began as an essay published in 1956 in "Women's Home Companion". She planned to expand it to full book form with lavish illustrations, and continued to collect field notes and impressions to include in the book. Unfortunately, the writing of "Silent Spring" and its overwhelming aftermath occupied most of her time and energy, and "The Sense of Wonder" was published posthumously.

The reissue of "The Sense of Wonder" is a seamless blend of Carson's text and Kelsh's photographs: The book would be diminished by far more than half if either of the two were removed. Carson's simple, direct text seems oddly akin to Dr. Spock's classic "Baby and Child Care", another 50s-era guide for parents. Spock opened his book assuring parents, "You know more than you think you do." Carson reassures adults who might feel inadequate to teach a child about the complexities of the physical world, saying, "I sincerely believe that for the child, and for the parent seeking to guide him, it is not half so important to know as to feel." Not simply a vague warm-and-fuzzy essay on the joys of nature, "The Sense of Wonder" includes specific suggestions for activities adults and children can share to awaken their capacity for feeling awe and delight in the natural world.

I found myself seeing the photographs as paintings produced with a camera. Focusing on patterns, colors, and fine detail, Kelsh produces stunning photographs. A crimson flower with yellow pollen heads, in extreme close-up, is an undiscovered O'Keefe. Mosses and lichens cover stones in an abstract of color and texture. A tangle of bare trees brings Escher to life. The photographs inspire a sensual response beyond simple sight; I can feel the dampness of the forest floor, smell the musty rotting-leaf smell, hear the smooth rush of water over stones.

Unaccompanied by any notation of the subject, the photographs echo Carson's concentration on the sensory experience. We don't know if the swirl of leaves filling the page are lilies, crocuses, or jack-in-the-pulpits. They are simply a lush green storm. Advising adults against the temptation to drill children with a sterile recitation of names and facts, Carson advises, "If facts are the seeds that later produce knowledge and wisdom, then the emotions and the impressions of the senses are the fertile soil in which the seeds must grow ... Once the emotions have been aroused ... then we wish for knowledge about the object of our emotional response. Once found, it has lasting meaning."

Biographer Linda Lear writes in her introduction to "The Sense of Wonder" that Carson "hoped her book would inspire adults and children alike to experience the sensory and emotional in nature, and knew that if they did, they would have less appetite for those activities that threatened the living world." This reissue, the inspiring blend of Rachel Carson's prose and Nick Kelsh's photographs, is ideally suited to accomplish her goal.

Karen Austin is a freelance writer and environmental activist based in Georgia.