A whole subculture of people is fascinated by the Meadowlands, that huge expanse of marshland and tidal creeks broken up by bridges, highways, big-box stores, warehouses, football stadiums, arenas, malls, and the multicolored, otherworldly behemoth that is the Xanadu entertainment complex.
Now comes veteran children’s author Thomas F. Yezerski, who lives in Hoboken and has written and illustrated Meadowlands, a New York Times-reviewed picture book for kids ages 5 to 8 that traces the history of this sometimes troubled confluence of ecosystem and industry.
Secaucus residents should be especially interested in what goes on there.
“Secaucus is right in the middle of the Meadowlands,” Yezerski said. “It’s the only town completely surrounded by the Meadowlands, a true Meadowlands city.”
“Kids love reading about the Meadowlands.” Thomas Yezerski
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“I was personally interested in the area,” he said. “It was kind of chaotic, and I wanted to make sense of the nature versus humans and learn more about all the different creatures that live in the Meadowlands.”
The first creature he mentions requires a Google search. Turns out mummichogs are mud minnows found in the brackish and coastal waters along the eastern seaboard of the United States.
Some Meadowlands creatures have started to come back to the area after having been driven away by pollution.
“The mummichogs are little fish that actually survive pollution pretty well,” he said, “and because they were there, birds of prey and shore birds had enough to eat. The more creatures that are low on the food chain that come back, the more the higher ones on the food chain come back.”
Links in the food chain
“The Meadowland has been really decimated,” Yezerski said. “It had been worse than I thought when I moved here in 1995.”
Yezerski had lived for 12 years in Rutherford before moving to Hoboken.
“I learned about creatures coming back after being gone for so long,” he said, “and I thought it was a great story for kids.”
He said that sandpipers, hawks, bald eagles, and osprey have been spotted in the Meadowlands. The area is a stop for birds on the Atlantic flyway, who swoop down to carbo load in the Meadowlands.
Yezerski’s book takes kids back to the time of the Lennni Lenape Indians.
“Humans have been trying to use the Meadowlands and abusing the Meadowlands since Europeans settled here,” he said. “There have been follies like Xanadu, things sinking into the mud, roads being swallowed up; nothing has really changed.”
Back when the Lenni Lenape inhabited the area, it was mostly a swamp of cedar trees, Yezerski pointed out. If you go there today near the Mill Creek mall, you can still see cedar stumps sticking up from the swamps.
“They’ve been there for thousands of years,” Yezerski said.
A book with wide appeal
While 5-year-olds will enjoy the book, Yezerski thinks that fourth graders all the way up to adults will get the most out of it.
“I’ve taken it to a couple of schools,” he said. “Kids are really curious. They love it, especially the little spot illustrations. They want to know every detail about anything. Knowledge is power for kids and they want to read as much about something as they can.”
Everything interests them. “They really enjoy reading about this area so much,” he said, “highways, trains, factories, pollution, all the different kinds of animals. There are 300 species of birds, and they want to know about every single one of them.”
And how does an old-fashioned children’s book author compete in the digital age?
“I’m not pretending that this is an iPad,” he said, “but there is a lot of information on each page, similar to a website.”
Though many of the kids may live near the Meadowlands, Yezerski said, “I don’t think kids have a great sense of boundaries of towns, and might not even have a sense of where the Meadowlands is, but they are fascinated by what goes on there.”
Yezerski, who has written fiction and historical fiction for kids, was really strict about getting the facts right in Meadowlands.
“I wanted to tell a fun story,” he said, “and the biggest problem with research is that I didn’t know where to stop. There was so much to learn. I had a pile of notes that I didn’t know how to pare down into a picture-book length story.”
It took him an astonishing 10 years to finish the book. It has 99 illustrations, including the spot illustrations that border each page.
The seeds were sown
“I never thought of myself as a writer,” Yezerski said. “But when I was shopping my portfolio around to publishers, they said it would be better if I wrote myself.”
And the rest is history.
Yezerski is the author or illustrator of several children’s books. Meadowlands, which is subtitled “A Wetlands Survival Story,” chronicles the area’s environmental woes with crisp writing that kids will understand.
Describing the sandpiper, he writes, “They don’t mind the trains and planes, as long as the Meadowlands provides them with enough food.”
His illustrations of beer cans and garbage dumps are just as compelling as those of insects and osprey.
“I’ve been drawing since I was old enough to hold a pencil,” he said. “I had never drawn animals professionally. It was a challenge I looked forward to. I enjoy architectural things, seeing different bridges, factories, and buildings.”
Indeed, the illustrations are a perfect blend of the natural and manmade, with trains, trucks, and the intricate latticework of the Pulaski Skyway, a constant backdrop.
Seeing firsthand
Yezerksi and his intrepid wife took many trips by canoe through the Meadowlands. When the water isn’t “hazardously cold,” anyone can rent a canoe from the Hackensack Riverkeeper at Laurel Hill in Secaucus.
In fact, Captain Bill Sheehan, Hackensack Riverkeeper, vetted the book.
“I had written that the Meadowlands is a flat, brown place,” Yezerski said. “Bill Sheehan said that it is actually different kinds of green.”
Yezerski said the photographs helped him get the illustrations just right. “What does the underside of the Turnpike look like? How is it held up? How does it fit on the supports? How many stacks does the PSE&G generating station have?”
The Meadowlands’ industrial landscape grows on you.
“I came from Pennsylvania where I had more traditional pastoral scenes,” he said. “At first I was shocked and affronted by everything attacking me visually when I’d be in a scary place with an abandoned factory or something.”
Soon that changed.
“My curiosity and fear led to appreciation, then fascination and love. Humans are just as much a part of nature as egrets and fiddle crabs. There’s the beauty of our own Pulaski Skyway.
“All the architecture is so complex it’s gorgeous.”
Meadowlands: A Wetlands Survival Story is available on amazon.com and in many bookstores for $17.99.
Kate Rounds can be reached at krounds@hudsonreporter.com..