It's Official: EARTH DAY 2021: Looking Back To Move Ahead

 This EARTH WEEK I have featured two or more picture books for several days running. Now it is officially EARTH DAY. One of the reasons I chose to continue to live here in Wisconsin after graduating and beginning my career is the long history and then contemporary respect for nature and the environment. Wisconsin's own ALDO LEOPOLD was a leader of the modern environmental conservation movement in the early twentieth century. In 1970, Wisconsin's longtime Senator, Gaylord Nelson, was the activist leader of the first EARTH DAY. It was easy to love a state that offered a wide range of natural beauty but also produced leaders and defenders of wild places and wildlife. 

Earth Day, Earth Week, and other conservation/restoration activities play a crucial role in bringing to our attention the damages done by humans and the ways in which each of us humans have a role to play in restoring balance and guard rails to nature's resources.

Picture books can support that role. ALL YERA LONG! That's why I've shared two or more picture books on these themes every day this week, a much more frequent schedule than I usually follow. And it is why I review and recommend inspiring and informative books with environmental themes all throughout the months and years. 

So today, the actual fiftieth anniversary of the original EARTH DAY, I will link back to a few of the many books that are favorites I featured on this topic. Recently I made that point about sustaining awareness and action when reviewing WELCOME HOME, WHALES by Christina Booth.

If you missed it, I hope you'll click and read what I thought about it HERE.

Then consider the remarkable ways in which Earth's lifeforms make phenomenal adaptations in order to survive what Nature, and our human abuse of Nature, can do to the habitats, food chains, climates, and other essentials of their survival.

One such story is told in MOTH: AN EVOLUTION STORY, written by Isabel Thomas and gloriously illustrated by Daniel Egneus.

In that same post I examined SEA BEAR: A JOURNEY FOR SURVIVAL, written and illustrated by Lindsay Moore. This pair of books are both award-winning and heartbreaking. Nonfiction content is revealed with grace in text and glory in illustration. Do yourself a favor and check out the post HERE. 

Though there are many other books related to these topics among years of reviews here, I'll include just one more post that celebrates the simple wisdom and beauty of a rock. A STONE SAT STILL is written and illustrated by the brilliant Brendan Wenzel. Here's part of what i said about it in that original post:

Each phrase, each panel, each perspective elicits engagement, draws me into the moment portrayed. 

Is this:

 a quiet book, a reflective book, a bedtime book, a nature book, a calming book? 

Yes, to all of those.

The magic of Wenzel's creation, in my opinion, is that this book is also:

an environmental book,

a climate change book,

an endangered species book, 

a science book,

a habitat book, 

a food chain book,

a call-to-action book.

In that same post I featured a classic favorite picture book, EVERYBODY NEEDS A ROCK, by the multi-award-winning pair, author Byrd Baylor and illustrator Peter Parnell. My final sentence in that post is this:

Empowering books can empower lives- and maybe even change our world for the better.

I hope you'll take a look at one or more of these amazing picture books, share them with young readers, and  encourage active protection of our EARTH on every day of the year. Environmental awareness and activism can't be a one day, one week, one state effort. We are all in the same boat. Here's my EARTH DAY gift to you, a YOUTUBE link to the truth-telling song, BLUE BOAT HOME written by Peter Mayer, in a video created by Scott McNeill

Click. Watch. Listen, Reflect.

BLUE BOAT HOME    

A Stone Sat Still: The (World) Is Lovely, Dark, and Deep...

Chronicle Books 2019

Look.

Please.

Just look at this cover. 

Really look at it.

A STONE SAT STILL is written and illustrated by award-winning Brendan Wenzel. It invites readers to do just the same, to sit still, to REALLY look at this single, very specific stone. 

To look intently, from various perspectives and points of view, over time, with all of our senses. 

In the opening and closing endpapers we encounter the stone, recognizing hints of the passage of time and circumstances surrounding the stone. With that passing time, the story of our world has dramatically changed, but the stone remains. 

I wrote out the full text, all 233 words of it. I did that because each phrase within that short text, each perspective, unfolds its own powerful truth through Wenzel's earthy bend of media: cut paper, colored pencils, oil pastels, and computer. The rhymed but free-form text incorporates rhythm so effectively as to feel, to me, like breathing. It's the kind of breathing I do when meditating or doing yoga. Each phrase, each panel, each perspective elicits engagement, draws me into the moment portrayed. 

Is this:

 a quiet book, a reflective book, a bedtime book, a nature book, a calming book? 

Yes, to all of those.

The magic of Wenzel's creation, in my opinion, is that this book is also:

an environmental book,

a climate change book,

an endangered species book, 

a science book,

a habitat book, 

a food chain book,

a call-to-action book.

You get the idea. 

In a recent post I shared a book and message about starting our future citizens young in developing an appreciation of the natural world in which they live and expanding their awareness of their relationship with that world (HERE). 

This, too, is a must-have book for sharing, at any age. It begs readers to step outside, to transfer the experiences modeled in the book about that stone, the one  that sat still on the pages but changed at every turn. 

That exercise requires attention to all of our senses, to fine details, to surrounding conditions and creatures, to imagination, and to predictions about how nature will change that object over time- days, seasons, decade, and centuries.

Then it invites us to ask the hard questions. 

Among those- is it nature that is changing or are we changing nature? 

And, if so, how? Why?

Public and individual activism about climate change in relation to our personal choices is, in my opinion, essential. Taking time to examine what climate change actually means, right outside our doors, both natural and human-made, is even more essential.

Alladin Books

When I had my own classrooms, (again, with students of any age), I used Byrd Baylor's and Peter Parnell's  EVERYBODY NEEDS A ROCK to activate science and literature reflections, including using it as mentor text for writing in both categories.

This latest release reflects the importance of the values Baylor presented in her classic picture books about nature, and the two titles pair well. I encourage getting both books to share and compare, as well as to initiate field activities, writing, and further reading in fiction and nonfiction, (yes, at every age). 

Particularly with established readers and writers, I urge you to write out the full text of each book, to share it with students and consider how and why such spare and simple text, such ordinary word choice, such straightforward statements can achieve such power. Consider line breaks, repetition, pacing, rhythm, internal and near-rhyme. Both books are brilliant  examples of writing craft without using big words, even including run-on sentences. Struggling readers and writers can access and evaluate these books as readily and with as much (or more) success as stellar students. Often it is those speedy students who struggle most with the reflective nature of books like these.

Empowering books can empower lives- and maybe even change our world for the better.