They never met, Rachel Carson and Cecilia Cruz.

Cecilia, as you’re about to learn, is a little girl who lives indoors. She doesn’t get out much, doesn’t want to, but she has a mom, and that mom coaxes her out the door, across the yard and onto a beach that looks….. totally empty, totally boring—and then, something happens. Something extraordinary.

Actually, reading this cartoon strip, two amazing things happen, or happened to me. The words come from Rachel Carson, the famous marine biologist and author of the world-changing Silent Spring. The text is only 340 or so words, lifted from an essay she wrote about taking her little nephew to explore woods and beaches. It’s about childhood wonder.

Carson writes well