Green Options

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This fall, a heartwarming book titled Looking for Miza:  The True Story of the Mountain Gorilla Family Who Rescued One of their Own by Juliana Hatkoff, Isabella Hatkoff, Craig Hatkoff, and Dr. Paula Kahumbu will be released to raise awareness of the endangered mountain gorillas.  Last summer, ten of the world’s remaining 700 mountain gorillas were tragically massacred.  This book was born out of the true story of Miza, who’s mother was killed, and a need to educate children, teachers, and parents about the mountain gorilla crisis.

The beautiful photographs by Perter Greste of Miza and her family help tell her incredible tale.  Miza is a young gorilla living in Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where just over half of the world’s mountain gorillas live.  In June 2007, park rangers Innocent and Diddy discovered that Miza and her mother were missing from their family group.  They immediately began looking for Miza, as her survival was at stake.  What surprised the rangers was that Kibirizi, the family group’s silverback, also went looking for Miza and her mother.

As the head of the family group, Kibrizi was responsible for protecting the 31 gorillas in his family. Before he began his search for Miza, he took his family high into Mount Mikeno to hide in his absence.  After several days, Kibrizi returned with Miza, but her mother was never found.  Miza’s mother was one of the ten massacred mountain gorillas.  Miza almost died without her mother’s care, but she was adopted by her big sister and learned to eat on her own.

I am glad to see that authors are writing books for children on climate change. Rising Above Global Warming, written by B. J. DeFrancesco and illustrated by Shari Lynn Myers, is the story of a father and son.  The father, named Dee Nile, does not believe in global warming and owns polluting factories.  The son tries to talk to his father about the effects of climate change they are observing, and his father’s standard reply is “poppycock”.

Rising Above Global Warming is the first children’s book I have read that deals with the denial many adults have about climate change.  I imagine many children try to have conversations with their ignorant parents on the subject, similar to the characters in this book.  Eventually, as the ocean rises, snow melts in the mountains, and the beloved birds leave the town of Terra, Dee Nile realizes climate change is real and happening. The characters then make positive changes, such as planting trees and powering the factory with wind power. Their efforts pay off, and the effects of climate change are reversed.  DeFrancesco explains:

My story is positive.  It empowers children to get involved and not be afraid to act. I want them to know they can make a difference.  The bottom line, it is not too late to do something about global warming. It starts with one person making a difference, then it escalates.

My daughter is a vegetarian, a choice she made on her own as a four-year-old. I am a vegetarian, but her father eats fish and the rare locally-grown beef. As a toddler, we let her make her own food choices, as I figured her body would tell her what healthy choices she needed.

When she was old enough to realize that an animal was harmed for her food, she made the choice to join me in a vegetarian lifestyle. She was the only vegetarian in her kindergarten class. Now, her best friend has become a vegetarian and her teacher is a vegan. Thus, she was very excited to read a book about a vegetarian dragon!

Herb, the Vegetarian Dragon, written by Jules Bass and illustrated by Debbie Harter, is the tale of the only pacifist, vegetarian dragon in the forest of Nogard. The other dragons ate royal princess, brave knights, and wild boar meat, but Herb had his own vegetable patch. When all the dragons fled to hide from the brave knights who decided to retaliate and capture all of the dragons, Herb was mistakenly imprisoned as one of the meat eating, killing dragons. While he was incarcerated, the other dragons tried to tempt him to eat meat:

“Thanks, but no thanks,” Herb said. “I don’t see it your way, so I’ll take my chances. I don’t ask you to stop eating meat, so why do you ask me to stop eating vegetables?”

There’s a plethora of wonderful children’s books on gardening, but there is always room for more! What’s This? A Seed’s Story by Caroline Mockford is a charming story about a child’s discovery of a seed and the cycle of plant life. I was lucky enough to have my six-year-old daughter read this book to me for her homework.

What’s This? A Seed’s Story begins with a bird discovering a seed one winter morning. I anticipated the bird would eat the seed, then deposit its droppings somewhere and begin the plant’s life; however, my prediction was wrong. Instead, a little girl, along with her marmalade cat, discovered it and “planted the seed carefully in a corner of her garden.” My daughter has her own garden, as I believe every child should, so I was happy to see the main character in this book also has her own garden bed. (Fellow writer Beth recently wrote about her child’s birthday garden, but back to our story…)