The idea of caring for the environment seems to be easier to get across to kids than to adults. Many adults just think the world is too complicated. "What difference does one light bulb or one plastic water bottle make in the wide world?" they think.
For kids, it may be easier to grasp the idea that underlies every kind of activism: Change Begins With Me. After all, for kids, everything begins with Me. They are less overwhelmed by the vastness of the world, more willing to see the direct line between their own light switch and, say, a polar bear habitat. Many adults treat such connections as if they were cute fairy tales — as if only a child could imagine that one little SUV had any bearing on world oil consumption! For such adults, "Reduce, recyle, reuse" might as well be "Eenie, meenie, minie, moe."
If the current crop of children's books doesn't make environmentalists out of the next generation, I don't know what will. The following picture books are bursting with imagination, great stories, exhilarating ideas and wonderful art. Read them for pleasure; there isn't a dry patch of didacticism anywhere.
Sustainability — a bedrock concept of environmentalism — is the subject of "Energy Island" by Allan Drummond (Farrar, Straus Giroux: $16.99, ages 6-10). Drummond tells the true story of the Danish island of Samso, where the citizens banded together to become almost entirely energy independent. The movement began with the question "What are some ways we could make our own energy?" At first, there were scoffers who said "Why us?" or "It will cost millions!" But in the space of a few years, the people of Samso came up with ways to produce the power they needed, especially using the wind that constantly swept the island. The thrilling idea, the book concludes, is that Samso is "not very different from where you live." Your community doesn't need wind; it needs a spark, to get people to think and work together.
Some kids are just drawn to animals. For them, it will be inspiring to read "The Watcher: Jane Goodall's Life With the Chimps" by Jeanette Winter (Schwartz & Wade Books: $17.99, ages 4-8). This deceptively simple biography begins with Jane's family frantically searching high and low for their 5-year-old, only to have her burst out of the henhouse with the triumphant cry: "I know how an egg comes out!" Detailing her legendary powers of observation, the story follows her to Africa and into the bush, where she patiently waited for the chimpanzees to trust her so that she could learn their secrets.
Another look at a scientist at work comes in "Far From Shore: Chronicles of an Open Ocean Voyage" by Sophie Webb (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt: $17.99, ages 9-12). A field biologist and naturalist, Webb describes her daily experience aboard a research vessel on a half-year mission in the Eastern Tropical Pacific. As she collects her samples and makes her analyses, she also makes drawings of what she sees, scene-setting seascapes as well as technical studies recording her observations. This book, like the Jane Goodall biography, gives a rare glimpse into the pleasures of meaningful work.
Meant for even the tiniest children, Molly Beth Griffin's "Loon Baby" (illustrated by Anne Hunter, Houghton Mifflin: $16.99, ages 4-8) is a perfect marriage of the art of storytelling and the precision of the naturalist. One day, when Mama Loon dives into the lake, Loon Baby waits and waits for her. He tries his own little dives, but he keeps bobbing up because he hasn't mastered the strong kick yet. Where is she? He can't find her anywhere. Finally he gives a cry, "a high-low shuddering cry, a mournful, wavering cry, a sinking, giving-up cry" that "shook his whole body and shivered out over the whole empty lake." And up pops Mama! Now there is a grand story climax, as well as a naturalist's description that Charles Darwin himself could be proud of.
For 200 years, naturalists were perplexed by their inability to discover where the marbled murrelet nested. In "Seabird in the Forest" (Boyds Mills Press: $17.95, ages 5-9), Joan Dunning spins the wonderful tale of this tiny ocean bird, which spends its life on and in the Pacific Ocean, floating on the waves and diving for fish to eat. When it is ready to lay eggs, the bird flies inland, as far as 50 miles, to the high canopy of the redwood forest. There it builds a nest and raises its chick, flying back and forth to the sea to bring back small fish to feed the baby. When the chick is ready, his instinct leads him back to the sea.
In "Thunderbirds: Nature's Flying Predators" (Sterling: $14.95, ages 6 and up), Jim Arnosky has found a way to squeeze the grandeur and awesome power of birds of prey into the tame format of a picture book. His fold-out pages let him spread out, at something like life-size, his paintings of an osprey wing, a pelican beak or the astonishing variety of owl faces.
