Earth Day Books for Kids: Inspiring Environmental Awareness
Celebrate Earth Day with us!
As we celebrate Earth Day, it's a great opportunity to teach kids about the importance of taking care of our planet. One of the best ways to do this is through reading, and fortunately, there are plenty of amazing books out there that can help educate and inspire young readers.
If you're a parent, teacher, or caregiver, you can use the following books to initiate important conversations with children about environmental responsibility and sustainability. These books are fun, engaging, and educational, and they will inspire kids to take action to help protect our planet for generations to come. This Earth Day, why not share one of these books with the young readers in your life and help them learn to appreciate and take care of the world around them?
Let's Teach Sustainability Through These Engaging Stories
Peppa Pig and the Earth Day Adventure
by Candlewick Press Candlewick Press
It's Earth Day, and Peppa and her family are celebrating with a visit to the Botanical Gardens. But first, there's recycling to sort and compost to collect. Then they're off in Daddy Pig's electric car! At the gardens, everyone enjoys seeing and learning about the many plants and the colorful wildflowers, which the bees love almost as much as Peppa does. There's even a surprise outside--one that's wet and squishy and just right for jumping in!
My Friend Earth: (Earth Day Books with Environmentalism Message for Kids, Saving Planet Earth, Our Planet Book)
by Patricia MacLachlan - David Diaz - Francesca Sanna
Our friend Earth does so many wonderful things! She tends to animals large and small. She pours down summer rain and autumn leaves. She sprinkles whisper-white snow and protects the tiny seeds waiting for spring.
Readers of all ages will pore over the pages of this children's book that is bursting with color and texture. Its enticing pages feature clever cut-outs, flaps, and curved contours that encourage exploration as its poetic text celebrates everything Earth does for us, all the while reminding us to be a good friend in return.
Earth Day, Birthday!
by Maureen Wright - Violet Kim
It's April 22, and Lion and his friends want to plant trees, recycle bottles, and have fun on Earth Day. But not Monkey. He wants to celebrate his birthday. Can he convince the other animals that it really is his birthday? Violet Kim's humorous artwork, rendered in paper, photographs, and colored pencil, highlight the sunny, friendly world of the animals.
Earth Day Every Day
by Lisa Bullard - Xin Zheng
On Earth Day, we find ways to help the Earth. Trina plants trees with her class. She forms an Earth Day club with her friends. What can you do to make every day Earth Day? Do your part to be a planet protector! Discover how to reduce, reuse, recycle, and more with Tyler and Trina in the Planet Protectors series, part of the Cloverleaf Books(TM) collection. These nonfiction picture books feature kid-friendly text and illustrations to make learning fun!
Earth Day
by Joanna Ponto
By reading about Earth Day's history and purpose as well as how it is celebrated the world over, students will learn that there is more to the holiday than just recycling and planting trees. To celebrate our planet, children can create a rock paperweight and make an Earth Day-related recipe to share with family and friends.
Fancy Nancy: Every Day Is Earth Day: A Springtime Book for Kids
by Jane O'Connor - Robin Preiss Glasser
e
Learning to respect the environment is no small task, especially if you want to celebrate Earth Day every day of the week! Luckily, Nancy is on hand to make sure Mom, Dad, and her little sister do their part in being green--even if she has to keep reminding them. Nancy knows that she's helping her family do something very important, but will she take her enthusiasm for the environment a step too far?
Fancy Nancy: Every Day Is Earth Day is a Level One I Can Read book, which means it's perfect for children learning to sound out words and sentences. The back matter features a list of the rich vocabulary words that are used throughout the story along with their definition.
Ants in Your Pants, Worms in Your Plants!: (Gilbert Goes Green): A Springtime Book for Kids
by Diane de Groat - Diane de Groat
Gilbert has trouble coming up with ideas. First he couldn't think of a springtime poem, and now he needs an idea for an Earth Day project! Everyone else in Mrs. Byrd's class is busy working on posters about recycling and saving water and electricity, but Gilbert wants to do something original. A distressing class picnic inspires him, and he comes up with an Earth Day project that even Mrs. Byrd thinks is the best idea yet.
With vivid, lively illustrations and a timely story about how kids really can help the world around them, Diane deGroat shows readers of all ages that sometimes the simplest solutions are right in our own backyards!
Nate the Great and the Earth Day Robot
by Andrew Sharmat - Olga Ivanov - Aleksey Ivanov
The Earth Day Fair is days away, but Nate's classroom project--a robot named Mr. Butler--has disappeared. Nate the Great and his dog, Sludge, take on the unusual case, and they are soon searching high and low in and around the school. Will Nate find the robot in time for the fair?
Perfect for Common Core, the Nate the Great chapter book series will encourage children to problem-solve and learn about STEM topics, using logical thinking to solve mysteries!
The Day the River Caught Fire: How the Cuyahoga River Exploded and Ignited the Earth Day Movement
by Barry Wittenstein - Jessie Hartland
After the Industrial Revolution in the 1880s, the Cayuhoga River in Cleveland, Ohio, caught fire almost twenty times, earning Cleveland the nickname "The Mistake on the Lake." Waste dumping had made fires so routine that local politicians and media didn't pay them any mind, and other Cleveland residents laughed off their combustible river and even wrote songs about it.
But when the river ignited again in June 1969, the national media picked up on the story and added fuel to the fire of the recent environmental movement. A year later, in 1970, President Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency--leading to the Clean Water and Clean Air Acts--and the first Earth Day was celebrated. It was a celebration, it was a protest, and it was the beginning of a movement to save our planet.
Black Beach: A Community, an Oil Spill, and the Origin of Earth Day
by Stith Stith - John Stith - Maribel Lechuga
In 1969, Union Oil caused an oil spill off the coast of Santa Barbara that would change the world. Hazardous crude oil from the blowout flooded the Pacific Ocean, harming wildlife and devastating habitats. But from this ecological disaster sprang a new wave of environmental activism that continues to this day.
Based on actual events, Black Beach: A Community, an Oil Spill, and the Origin of Earth Day follows Sam and her classmates as they fight back. Sam initially feels powerless watching her parents and neighbors try to clean up the oil spill. But as her awareness grows, she learns she's not alone in caring for the Earth. The impact of the spill seeps into living rooms and classrooms across the nation. People everywhere are motivated to act, and a movement to protect and celebrate the environment is born.