ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how children's contact with and understanding of nature can be both enhanced and frustrated by different forms of media. There are three principal ways that children access nature: direct, indirect and vicarious contact. The chapter examines the role of digital media and other less-controversial, more-traditional media, such as stories, books, films and wildlife documentaries, in children's urban-nature experiences. It investigates the ways nature is presented and packaged for children and how this potentially influences children's nature relationships. The chapter also explores the comparative lack of urban nature in mediated forms and the potential impact of an overriding dominant presentation of nature as pristine, rural and usually populated by large, cuddly or fierce creatures. It concludes with a poem "Ode to a Goose", which is commonly taught to Chinese children and was penned during the Tang Dynasty by seven-year-old Luo Binwang, who went on to become a famous poet.
