Use books to introduce kids to Earth Day

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BY LEANNE ITALIE/The Associated Press

Praise dirt and hail a recycling superhero in a lush crop of kid books for Earth Day.

Familiar characters like Little Critter and important ones like Nobel Peace laureate Wangari Maathai make appearances in the books.

*“Michael Recycle” (Worthwhile Publishing, $15.99, ages 3-8) by Ellie Bethel, illustrated by Alexandra Colombo.

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"Michael Recycle" (Worthwhile Publishing, $15.99, ages 3-8) by Ellie Bethel, illustrated by Alexandra Colombo.

In the whimsical town of Abberdoo-Rimey, the “garbage was left to grow rotten and grimey.” Until Michael Recycle, a freckle-faced, green-caped crusader with a metal colander for a hat, drops from the sky head first into a trash can.

* “Planting the Trees of Kenya: The Story of Wangari Maathai” (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $16.95, ages 5-8) by Claire A. Nivola.

Both author and illustrator, Nivola uses delicate watercolors and lyrical prose to bring to life the sacred fig trees and pure streams of Maathai’s youth on a peasant farm in the fertile hills of central Kenya. Maathai, founder of the grassroots Green Belt Movement, returns home from college in America in 1966 to find gardens dry, her people malnourished and her beloved trees all but lost to commercial farming amid rapid population growth.

* “The Dirt on Dirt” (Kids Can Press, $15.95, ages 9-12) by Paulette Bourgeois with Kathy Vanderlinden, illustrated by Martha Newbigging.

Learn how a grain of African sand can hitch a ride on hot desert air and travel thousands of miles to settle under your bed. This wide-ranging book tackles the tilt of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the role mud plays in the creation of fossils and the mega-problem of chemicals in landfills.

* “It’s Earth Day!” (Harper Collins, $3.99, ages 3-7) by Mercer Mayer.

Little Critter learns about Earth Day in school and is called to action by a movie on the North Pole’s melting ice. He must save the polar bears and heads straight for the computer to figure out how. Not satisfied that turning off lights and using less water will be enough, the young critter comes up with an ice-cooled invention that doesn’t work quite right but leads him to a revelation.