A child once asked me why beavers build dams. I wanted to answer smartly: to dam up water, to create a retention basin, to protect the feeding grounds… But before I could, he asked something else: And is the wolf really bad because it has sharp fangs? And it was at this point that it occurred to me that instead of fairy tales, it is worth telling children real stories. The kind that could happen in reality – for example, about a beaver that didn’t want to be the hero of a legend at all, but just needed more water to survive.

I am not an author of fairy tales. I deal with water on a daily basis – the real kind, not the symbolic kind. The one that flows in, flows out, sometimes disappears. The one in rivers, lakes and the Baltic Sea. The very real one. And that’s why I wrote about beavers. Not out of a longing for fiction, but out of a need to explain reality to children.

I am not sure I grasp the “hard truth” that this author is giving to children. I’m not sure why “To keep their families safe” is such a hard truth? Anymore than little read riding hood is a hard truth. But the author clearly feels that telling the facts about beavers clarifies the dire straights we’re all in,

Because the question Why do beavers build dams? is not childish at all. It is accurate. In today’s world, rivers are often straightened for convenience, and retention is tried to make up for it with concrete. It’s worth stopping at this one scene: a beaver pulls in a branch, lays it in the water and changes the entire ecosystem. Not by administrative order, not by design. Out of instinct, out of necessity. And by the way – for the benefit of the environment.

Why do beavers build dams? is a story that could really happen. And that’s why it needs to be told to children. Without bad wolves and morals about polite animals.

Beaver is not acting in the investor’s interest. He is not revitalizing the creek in a concrete bathtub. He is simply doing what evolution has taught him: slowing down water, holding it back and creating space for life. And in the process, it counteracts the effects of drought better than many an expensive hydro project.

Is this the hard truth about beavers? That they are not doing all this work for you of for the fish or for the birds or for the otters? Is that a hard truth?

I don’t know. I am kind of reminded of an old Paula Poundstone riff about the niceties of flight attendants thanking you for flying united when you exit the plane. She said

, “This plane was going about where I needed to go at about the time I needed to get there for about the amount I was willing to pay, Frankly Trixie, Trixie, I didn’t even know you’d be on this flight”

Beavers don’t do it to help anyone else. It just does.

Why did I write a book about beavers?

Not because I wanted to make children laugh. Nor because I dreamed of creating a nice animal character to color. I wrote the book because I felt that something needed to be explained to children. Something important.

We live in a world where real nature increasingly resembles pictures from books. Rivers are sometimes straightened, streams are hidden in pipes, and wetlands are reclaimed. What should be obvious – that water is not eternal, that nature works as a system of interconnected vessels – is no longer so. For children even more so. That’s why I felt it was necessary to tell the story in accessible language, but without giving up the truth.

I guess evaporation is the hard truth?

The book about beavers is not a fairy tale. It is a story that could really happen. In it, the beaver speaks in a human voice – this is true. But what it says is consistent with biology, ecology and hydrology. This book is not about a moral, but a starting point for discussion – with a parent, with a teacher, with oneself. Because every child will eventually ask: And how does it really work? And it’s good if he then hears the real answer.

And this is where the beaver can help. Because when he builds a dam, you can see the effect: the water level rises. But if you look further downstream, you will notice that birds, frogs, mud, aquatic plants appear. And then – that downstream it gets dry. And even further – that other animals have to change their place of life. It’s an ecosystem in motion. A connected vessel.

Okay,= I guess. The beaver can help us pay attention to the ecosystem and how water is vital to it. How vital it is to us. I get it.

Let’s tell children well about the beaver. Not as about a creature from a fairy tale, but as about a neighbor from the forest. As about a creature that has its place, its reasons, its right to be. And its engineering skills – not at all inferior to ours.