5 books for Earth Day! - Orca Book Publishers

Happy Earth Day, readers!

Every little thing matters (as we learn in the playful picture book featured below). So let’s get into the green, planet-saving mode with some of our favorite earth-related books!

1. What Matters by Alison Hughes and Illustrated by Holly Hatam

What happens when one small boy picks up one small piece of litter? He doesn’t know it, but his tiny act has big consequences. From the miniscule to the universal, What Matters sensitively explores nature’s connections and traces the ripple effects of one child’s good deed to show how we can all make a big difference.

2. The Summer We Saved the Bees by Robin Stevenson

Wolf’s mother is obsessed with saving the world’s honeybees, so it’s not too surprising when she announces that she’s taking her Save the Bees show on the road—with the whole family. Wolf thinks it’s a terrible plan, and not just because he’ll have to

wear a bee costume—in public. He likes his alternative school and hates the idea of missing weeks of classes. His teenage stepsister doesn’t want to leave her boyfriend, and one of his little half sisters has stopped talking altogether, but Wolf’s mom doesn’t seem to notice. She’s convinced that the world is doomed unless ordinary people take extraordinary action. It isn’t until the kids take some drastic action of their own that she is forced to listen when Wolf tells her that dragging the family around the province in a beat-up Ford panel van may not be the best idea she ever had.

3. Let’s Eat by Kimberley Veness

All the food you eat, whether it’s an apple or a steak or a chocolate-coated cricket, has a story. Let’s Eat uncovers the secret lives of our groceries, exploring alternative—and sometimes bizarre—farm technology and touring gardens up high on corporate rooftops and down low in military-style bunkers beneath city streets.
Packed with interesting and sometimes startling facts on agriculture around the world, Let’s Eat reveals everything from the size of the biggest farm in the world to how many pesticides are in a single grape to which insect people prefer to eat.

4. Wolf Island by Ian McAllister and Nicholas Read

The Great Bear Rainforest is a majestic place full of tall trees, huge bears and endless schools of salmon. Award-winning photographer and author Ian McAllister’s luminous photographs illustrate the story of a lone wolf who swims to one of the small islands that dot the rainforest’s coast. The island provides him with everything he needs—deer, salmon, fresh water—everything, that is, but a mate. When a female wolf arrives on the island’s rocky shores, she and he start a family and introduce their pups to the island’s bounty.

And check out the upcoming title in the My Great Bear Rainforest series, A Bear’s Life.

5. Out of Season by Kari Jones

Fourteen-year-old Maya sneaks out in her kayak before breakfast every day to check on a family of sea otters living in nearby Riley Bay. It’s hard being an animal lover in a fishing family. The animals Maya loves threaten her family’s livelihood, and Maya doesn’t know if she can trust her family not to hurt them. She is determined to protect the sea otters, even if it means checking on them for the rest of her life. One morning, Maya discovers she’s being watched. Who is it and what are they doing? Soon Maya has to trust someone as she gets caught in a dangerous race to save the sea otters—and her family’s livelihood—from poachers.