Wangari’s Trees of Peace, A True Story from Africa

Wangari’s Trees of Peace, A True Story from Africa

Jeanette Winter

Wangari was only a girl when she was awarded a  scholarship to study in the United States, so she left her beautiful home in Kenya, Africa only to return six short years later to barren land and devastation to her once rich, green community.  Wangari received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004 for world peace through the Green Belt Movement she began in 1977 on World Environment Day.  Wangari’s struggles to repopulate the once red, rich soil of her homeland with the green, lush trees that provided for so many became her quest and it began with 6 seedlings planted in her own back yard.  Soon after, women all over Kenya began planting “Symbols of Peace” together, which became known as the green belt. 

This was a wonderful addition to our unit “Human Effects on Our Environment”. The students listened so intently to Wangari’s story and the peace that her efforts brought to her own community, and her country, and our world.  The illustrations are full of color, and vibrant hope! 

Energy Island

Energy Island

By Allan Drummond

Mr. Drummond wrote a beautiful tribute to the community of Samso in Denmark and their combined efforts the harness the wind to save energy.  Samso is an island in the middle of Denmark that had oil shipped over to them in large oil tankers and electricity sent to them from the mainland through underwater cables in the ocean.  The book beings reminding the reader that Samso is just an ordinary island, with ordinary people, and ordinary children and ordinary lives.  The island was incredibly windy, so an idea came to these ordinary folks about “harnessing the wind to change their world” and become energy independent.  Huge wind turbines were placed on the island and the energy became so abundant that the little island was able to send their excess to the mainland!!

This tribute is a tough picture book to read aloud.  It names the citizens of Samso that were instrumental in various ways on nearly every page.  The book becomes hard to read and the children can get lost in the process.  While I loved reading about the process and effort the small community had to go through, I found it a difficult book to share with third graders.

A Kid’s Guide to How to Save the Planet

A Kid’s Guide to How to Save the Planet

By Billy Goodman

The Glossary in the back of this chapter book focuses on the vocabulary kids need to have to understand the threats to our environment.  It has 8 chapters the focus on recycling, reusing and reducing.  It gives kids suggestions on ways to conserve earth’s resources and ways to protect the many gifts of our planet.

I particularly loved sharing this book with the kids in my practicum classroom, not only for the vocabulary rich text, or the incredible stories featuring our water, our soil and our air, but mostly for the “What can we do?” sections at the end of each chapter.  These sections gave kids some great everyday way that they can “Save the Planet”!!