Concerned about our planet? Find hope in our greatest resource—children! Parents and teachers wishing to channel this boundless energy source can find guidance in a wealth of recently published books.
Young planet-savers learn best by doing. They can start early with Emily Sollinger’s interactive board book, This is Our World (Little Simon, ages 3-5). Each page holds reduce, reuse and recycle tips to transform beaches, parks, schools and gardens. Collect both ideas and two-sided puzzle pieces on each page and later assemble puzzles and a great conversation.
Frances Barry’s Let’s Save the Animals (Candlewick, ages 3-5). Children are natural animal lovers and the flip-page format and intriguing collages of this book show appealing portrayals of habitats and endangered beasts. The pictures will help lead your discussion, but there are also small, almost hidden sentences that describe how children can help the earth.
Todd Parr’s signature bold graphics and child-centered text works perfectly in The Earth Book (Little Brown, ages 3-6). His positive tone gives a series of doable actions that are easy to implement. Each idea, like “taking the bus” or “throwing garbage in the trash” ends each with “because” and the following page gives a child-centered explanation of the effect. This combination of practical and poetic ends with a tear-out Go Green poster that states principles.
Magical ingredients of rhyme, rhythm and repetition combine in Mary Siddals’ Compost Stew: An A to Z Recipe for the Earth (Tricycle, ages 3-5). Collages show a multicultural mix children gathering everything from apple cores to zinnia heads as well as directions of how to cook up fun as you save the earth!
Changes start at home. A concept well modeled by Linda Glaser and Shelley Rotner’s Garbage Helps Our Garden Grow: A Compost Story (Lerner, ages 4-6) Author and illustrator pair simple a straight-forward text with glorious photographs to show how one family’s garden benefits from their garbage. From compost bin to gorgeous produce, the steps are easy to imagine. Specific, more detailed explanations and directions follow the child-friendly story.
Truck fans may become recycle fans when Aidan Potts, writing Professor Potts, hooks them with the The Smash! Smash! Truck (David Fickling, ages 4-6) Great expanses of almost blinding color illustrate while intriguing page designs describe concepts like how the earth naturally recycle with the plant and water cycles and the various stages of recycling glass.
Putting a face on the cause helps and the Little Green Monster is a child-friendly model in Alison Inches’ second book I Can Save the Ocean! (Little Simon, ages 3-5). Little Green Monster does not like to clean up, but when he snorkels in an ocean floating in trash he begins by picking up after himself and goes on to urge others to do the same. Specific vocabulary and steps for solution find meaning in this engaging spokesmonster.
Older earth-conservations only need suggestions to get involved. Molly Smith offers fifty-five planet-protecting activities in Simple Steps Toward a Healthier Earth (Chronicle, ages 6-9). Children who love stickers, connecting the dots, mazes, word games and drawing will find solutions to both puzzles and ways to healing the world.
Who are the best teachers for students? Other children! And 4,385 of them are the authors of 31 Ways to Change the World (Candlewick, ages 5-10)! These actions are as intriguing as the photos, drawings, collages and comic strips that present them. The book and website (<www.wearewhatwedo.org>) propose simple ideas can make a difference--making someone smile, taking a cranky adult for a walk, teaching your granny to text. Perhaps the important of all is Action #31: Add your own .