Tag helping the environment

Counting in Green / Bee Activity Book

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Counting in Green
Hollis Kurman and Barroux
Otter-Barry Books

So much more than a mere counting book: this collaboration between Hollis Kurman, a climate activist and Barroux, an award winning illustrator presents as the subtitle says, ’10 little ways to help our big planet’. Little ways they may be; but if everyone followed all ten or even most of them, what a BIG difference that would make to our precious Mother Earth.

The actions include planting a new tree, eating meat free meals, recycling and reusing, 

taking our own bags when we go shopping so as to avoid plastic, getting involved in a beach clean-up, 

cultivating a garden that encourages bees and butterflies.

Barroux’s gently humorous illustrations are inclusive and work well with the straightforward text; and the final spread concludes with this challenge to young readers: How many ways can you think of to go green? That would make an excellent starting point to get a class of primary children thinking about this vital topic.

The final endpapers offer some relevant websites as well as a paragraph about the interconnectedness of everything on earth, which’s why getting involved is so vital.

Bee Activity Book
Patricia Hegarty and Britta Teckentrup
Little Tiger

This activity book is based on Patricia Hegarty’s text and Britta Teckentrup’s illustrations for the buzz-ingly bee-utiful original picture book Bee:Nature’s tiny miracle published a few years back.

Herein several settings are used – a meadow full of wild flowers, a pond, a riverside, a woodland clearing – as backdrops for the wealth of bee-related activities. You will find word searches, bee parts to label, mazes, spot the difference, things to count, scenes to colour, and others to complete using the stickers at the back of the book, as well as mosaics that also require colouring and the placing of stickers.

There’s a wealth of fun learning between this book’s covers – an ideal way for youngsters to enjoy some nature-related, screen-free time.

My Green Day

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My Green Day
Melanie Walsh
Walker Books

The messages contained in this book are as relevant today as when it was first published in 2010. Yes, almost all of us use our own bags when we go shopping …

but the amount of plastic that often goes into our shopping bags still needs to be dealt with. The home baking advocated by the little girl narrator is one way of dealing with that; however, much more needs to be done by the major supermarkets.

Essentially we share the girl’s day and she talks us through the green things that are her way of helping the environment. Each of her ten green actions is printed in large type and then two or sometimes more double spreads are allocated to illustrating and adding to her narration so for instance we have ‘At lunch … ‘I eat up all my pasta.’ and in small print ‘We throw away one third of all the food we buy. If we bought only the food we actually needed to eat, we wouldn’t have to grow or transport so much food, which saves lots of energy.’ This additional information can be left out if the audience is very young but children are never too young to start thinking about the all important messages herein.

Other suggestions include: adding an extra layer rather than using the central heating, avoiding the use of tumble dryers, composting and re-using materials to make gifts.

Melanie Walsh’s bright collage illustrations, albeit without the die-cuts and cutaway pages, are as fresh and contemporary looking as they were in the original edition.