Green Options » fiction

Eco Kids’ Books: BogeyBugz Series

Jennifer Lance — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 08:30:08 +0000

The BogeyBugz is a series of four environmental adventures by Martin Lever. The books are inspired by five-year-old Remi Gene Lever and follow the BogeyBugz Manifesto:

NOBODY NoSE WheRE theY CamE from.

BUT THEY’RE HERE, HAND-PICKED TO SAVE the WORLD.

BEFORE BEDTIME.

BeCauSE EVERY NOW and AGAIN,

MOTHER NATURE NEEDS SOMEONE

TO PICK-IT FOR THE PLANET

The BUGZ don’t condone nose picking…destruction of the forests or any other anti-social habits.

I absolutely love the illustrations in these books and the fact that the destruction of the forest is considered anti-social behavior (would someone please tell the Bush administration?); however, the resolutions in the stories don’t really work with the environmental problems they are trying to solve. The end page of each book is filled with “facterias” that I wish were more part of the plot of each environmental adventure.

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Eco Kids’ Books: William is Going Green

Jennifer Lance — Tue, 13 May 2008 13:20:57 +0000

William is Going Green, written by James Martin II and James Martin III, is the story of a garbage truck that loses his job, because he is too polluting. In search of a new job, William travels from town to town until he finds a green, clean city. He is told he could be hired as a recycling truck, if only he had a hybrid engine. Unfortunately, out-of-work William does not have the money for a new, cleaner engine, until he rescues a cat from a sewer. The cat Gage belongs to a mechanic, and William is given a hybrid engine and coat of green paint in reward for the rescue. The author explains, “My son James III and I created the William the Garbage Truck & Crew series to share what we learned about global warming and the benefits of conservation.”

My son, like many boys, adores trucks. He enjoyed William is Going Green when his sister read it to her, but there is one thing about the story I find a bit awkward. I do think that city garbage trucks should have hybrid motors, but as mentioned in the book, the cost to convert a truck is expensive and not readily available. William’s reward for rescuing a cat is not the solution for most city garbage trucks, and I think it is a little misleading to children who really want to see change. Perhaps there is another way William could have gotten a new hybrid motor from recycling proceeds, donations, gas taxes, etc. Maybe I am too much of a realist, but I like my green children’s fiction to address the realities of environmental change. This part of the story didn’t bother my children at all, and they really did like it.

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Children’s Literature: My Bag and Me!

Jennifer Lance — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 16:07:10 +0000

My Bag and Me!, written by Karen Farmer and illustrated by Gary Currant, is a cute rhyming board book about the benefits of using reusable shopping bags. The little boy in the story has his own shopping bag he takes to the store. He also reminds his mother to do the same.

Then it’s off to the checkout where we’ve all been before. I hand over My Bag and say, “Paper and plastic no more!” We feel really good when our shopping is done. We’ve saved so many bags by using this one!

My Bag and Me! comes with a reusable, small shopping bag. My only criticism is that the bag is made from Tyvek, a Dupont product. Dupont doesn’t exactly have a clean environmental record, and Tyvek is not as long lasting or washable as a cloth shopping bag. Furthermore, the bag and book both claim to be 100% recyclable, although I’ve never seen Tyvek accepted at a recycling center, and neither bag nor book are made from post consumer content.

500 billion paper and plastic bags are used each year globally! These “free” bags actually cost $4 billion dollars a year, and thus consumers pay the price for them in other ways. It is also staggering to consider that it takes 1,000 years for a plastic bag to decompose, and we have all seen the litter they create.

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Great Children’s Literature: My Mom Hugs Trees

Jennifer Lance — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 13:51:59 +0000

I have to admit, I am a mom who hugs trees. There’s even a black and white self-portrait of me hugging a cedar tree in my mother’s house. Since before my children were born, I have hiked to a sacred yew tree on my land, hugged it, and said my prayers several times a week.

Sometimes my children join in, sometimes they just explore the yew grove. Last winter, my hugging yew tree fell over after a great snow fall. I still hug it, and it is still alive, but I must lean over to hug my tree now.

My daughter can definitely relate to My Mom Hugs Trees, written by Robyn Ringgold and illustrated by Vidya Vasudevan. This rhyming book is the story of a mother that not only hugs trees, but she talks to plants, rescues bugs instead of killing them, plants seeds from the fruit they eat, asks the flowers if she can pick them, etc. OK, she’s a hippie!

After bedtime stories, Mom says good night to the moon and stars. “Good night, Moon. Good night, Stars. Thank you for your light from afar.

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Children’s Literature: Herb, the Vegetarian Dragon

Jennifer Lance — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 13:19:55 +0000

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?”

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