There is an overabundance of choices when it comes to teaching children about Earth Day and showing them how to care for the Earth. There are art projects, Earth Day celebrations, and gardens to plant. There are neighborhood clean ups, lessons online, and books you can read to your children! Most of us try to teach our children about green living and sustainability all year long, but Earth Day still remains a special day to focus on making additional changes, learning more about caring for the Earth, and celebrating all that the Earth gives us.

Books with lessons on caring for the Earth are numerous, and it can be overwhelming to select one from all of the choices we have. Earth-Friendly Buildings, Bridges, and More is a unique book that teaches about sustainable building techniques and how they help to protect and care for the Earth. The book provides the reader with information our children may not typically be exposed to. How much do you know about the sustainable buildings and other structures that exist in our world? I didn’t know much before reading this book.

Written and illustrated from the point of view of a 12-year old girl named Corry Lapont, the book will appeal to children of all ages. Corry narrates this book as a scrapbook of all the places her parents – both engineers – have taken her to visit. She collects postcards of these unique and green-inspired buildings and shares facts she has picked up along the way. Corry provides journal entries, pictures, and explanations about the structures. Experiential learning activities are also provided for the reader to help emphasize the lessons Corry is trying to convey.

Author, Etta Kaner, and illustrator, Stephen MacEachern, have done a stellar job of creating a book that so thoroughly engages its readers. The buildings, bridges, and other structures focused on in the book are fascinating – even for this adult reader. Did you know, for example, that the Swiss Re building in London, England does not provide parking spaces for cars? Instead, this building offers its tenants parking for their bicycles!

The Georgia dome in Atlanta, Georgia has a fiberglass fabric roof that stretches over a frame, much like an umbrella. The dome, according to Corry, follows green principles in many other ways too. They recycle cans, plastic, paper, glass, and water. They also compost food waste and donate excess food to local food banks.

When I first picked up this book and started reading, I thought I was reading an actual scrapbook written by a young girl. I was somewhat startled to learn that adults had written this book, and I wondered if that would take away from the experience of reading it. My six, nine, and eleven year old children had an opportunity to look through Earth-Friendly Buildings, Bridges, and More and were immediately captivated – each of them in his own way. So, despite the fact that I was thrown off in my discovery of adult author and illustrator, I do not think it takes away from the impact of the book.

Our whole family voluntarily sat down to read Earth-Friendly Buildings, Bridges, and More. One by one, we were all drawn – husband included – to what was inside. The eco-journal of Corry Lapont is a fantastic tool to use in your Earth Day activities. It also happens to be a good read once Earth Day is over!

I received this book from Kids Can Press with the intent to review it.

You can find this book at Amazon: