Outdoor Parents Outdoor Kids

Outdoor Parents, Outdoor Kids Rolling Strong

Books for Better Living, Outside TV, Denver Post, Keen Radio all herald effort to get kids outside

(LANCASTER, PA) - In the past 30 years, childhood obesity rates in the U.S. have more than tripled, affecting a third of our nation's children (currently 9 million children over age 6 are considered obese). And according to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, twelve states now have obesity rates above 30 percent, up from only one state four years ago. Coinciding with these statistics is an alarming downtick in children getting outdoors. The Outdoor Foundation reports that youth participation in outdoor recreation has dropped 17 percent over the last three years.

A book by award-winning author Eugene Buchanan hopes to help reverse both trends. Outdoor Parents, Outdoor Kids: A Guide to Getting Your Kids Active in the Great Outdoors (Fox Chapel Publishing, September 1, 2011) continues to ride a wave of momentum advocating the message of getting kids outside. Dovetailing with June's National Great Outdoor Month, the book has enjoyed a recent surge in media interest, with coverage on Outside TV, CBS Channel 4, Outside magazine, the Denver Post and Keen's HybridLife radio. It also recently won the Gold Medal in the Family category from the Living Now Book Awards. "Books like this are necessary to inform and inspire us to keep ourselves and the Earth healthy for future generations," says awards director Jim Barnes.

Released in conjunction with President Obama's America's Great Outdoors initiative, encouraging families to get outside, the book's premise is to help parents get kids off GameBoy and into the great outdoors. "Sadly, fewer youth are heading outdoors each year," says Outdoor Foundation executive director Christine Fanning, whose survey finds that most youth are introduced to outdoor activities through their families. "Reconnecting youth with the outdoors is critical to the health of future generations and our natural landscapes."

To that end, the book extends parents a set of training wheels in getting their kids active outside. Richard Louv, author of best-selling Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder, calls it "An excellent beginner's guide to help parents instill in their kids a love of outdoor activities." Carol Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club, calls it "an important contribution to the work of connecting our children to the outdoors." And award-winning filmmaker Ken Burns says, "Nowadays, too many of us, especially our children, suffer from a Nature deficit. This wonderful book will go a long way toward remedying that."

About the Author:

A former reporter for the Denver Business Journal and 14-year editor-in-chief of Paddler magazine, Eugene Buchanan has written about the outdoors for more than 25 years, from covering the X Games for ESPN.com to working for NBC at the Beijing Olympics. With freelance articles published in the New York Times, Men's Journal, Sports Afield, Outside, National Geographic Adventure, Forbes Life and other publications, his passion for traveling and writing has taken him to more than 30 countries on six continents. He is the author of Brothers on the Bashkaus, released in 2007. For more information visit http://www.netgalley.com/www.outdoorkidsbook.com.