And you can make a difference too! - an interview with Suzanne Corso, author of "Sammy and Sue Go Green Too!"

"Sammy and Sue Go Green Too!" is not only a great children's book, but also a very inspirational one both for kids and their parents.

If you had a chance to read our review of the book you probably know already that a) this book is about a joint mother-daughter journey into the green world and b) Eco-Libris collaborates with the publisher, Beaufort Books, and the author, Suzanne Corso, to encourage the readers of this wonderful book to green up their reading and take a step to support the environment by planting a tree with us for their copy.

The book is already receiving enthusiastic feedback and endorsements. On March it was selected as Book of the Year by NWYA's NY Reads Program, which is a program of New York Women’s Agenda (NWYA), a city-wide book discussion based on the reading of one book selected each year.

We felt that there's much more to explore about this great book and interviewed the author, Suzanne Corso, about her muse, the shared green experiences with her daughter and what children like about this book.

(Suzanne Corso on the left in the launch party of the book with actress Lorraine Bracco. Photo courtesy of Suzanne Corso)

Hi Suzanne. Please tell us what brought you to write this book

My daughter, Samantha. She is 10 years old now and she came to me 2 years ago came to me asking questions about the environment and she also wanted me to write something with her, and the result is the 'Sammy and Sue' series.

What is your favorite part in it?

Experiencing it with my daughter - driving a hybrid car with her, going together to Whole Foods, changing bulbs to energy saving bulbs, etc. I enjoyed explaining to her while we were doing it and she enjoyed learning as kids like to learn through visuals.

You did this green journey together with your daughter. Did it bring you closer? do you recommend other parents to team together with their kids and explore the green world together?

Definitely. It's a win-win and I recommend it to every parent - take your children to journeys, explain to them about recycling, food, cars and so on and you'll find it not only helps to raise the awareness of your kids, but also brings you together.

What are the main changes that you and Samantha made in your daily life following your journey?

There are many changes. A major one is food. We eat better and healthier food. We have this pack where Samantha eats super well on week days and then on the weekends she can enjoy herself with whatever food she wants. Eventually, I find that even of the weekends she wants to eat good food.

How did it influence her?

She is much more aware now to environmental issues. She helps me to explain kids about green issues such as recycling. When it comes from her it definitely helps to reinforce the message.

What is the feedback you're getting?

I get great feedback from both parents and children. I'm a mother, not an expert and parents can easily relate to it and to the idea of taking baby steps to make a difference.

Do you think children are capable of understanding the issues at stake?

Yes. When we have reading events for kids they always have questions and want to learn more. The best way is to use simple terms and relate to daily activities they know such as brushing teeth (keep the faucet closed while we brush), recycling newspapers, and so on. In the book I added a glossary at the end to help simplify difficult terms.

This is your first children's book. How is it in comparison with other writing you did?

I wrote before the book a novel and a screenplay and I can say that once you're a writer, you can write anything. But here I'm also extending my writing into further activities for kids and I founded and serve as the chairwoman of Sammy and Sue Enterprises, LLC, which will design and market a 3-D virtual world filled with games for kids with environmental themes. We plan to offer the first games at the beginning of 2010.

What are the upcoming titles in the series?

The next title is "SAMMY & SUE WITH ELEPHANTS IN AFRICA TOO"!, which takes place in Africa and combines both environmental and animal themes, as it will also a journey to save the wild elephants in Africa. This book will be released in January 2010. The title afterwards will be SAMMY & SUE EATING HEALTHY AND EXERCISING TOO!.

Thanks, Suzanne!

You can read more about the book and the 'Sammy and Sue' series at www.sammyandsue.com

And if you're in New York on Saturday, you can meet Suzanne Corso at Barney's NY, where she'll have a signing event. Details are below.

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris
www.ecolibris.net

The green book review week is coming!

This week we didn't have our Monday's green book review, but we have a good excuse: next week we're going to have a green book review not only on Monday, but on every day of the week!

Yes, we have too many books that are waiting on our review shelf (we have one..) so it's time to call ourselves to order and get these reviews written! And of course, more reviews mean more giveaways, so next week watch out for three giveaways in one week!

And I have to admit that these are really really good books and they cover a wide range of environmental-social themes, so you don't want to miss the opportunity to learn a little more about them.

And here's our plan for next week:

Monday: The Idealist.org Handbook to Building a Better World

Tuesday: Big Green Cookbook: Hundreds of Planet-pleasing Recipes and Tips for a Luscious, Low-carbon Lifestyle

Wednesday: Clean Body: The Humble Art of Zen-Cleansing Yourself

Thursday: The Gort Cloud

Friday: The Carbon Diaries, 2015

Now if you'll excuse us, we have some reading to do..

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris
www.ecolibris.net

The new Kindle wants to offer students an offer they can't refuse

Amazon introduced today the Kindle DX, a larger version of the Kindle, targeted at readers of textbooks, newspapers and documents.

It is definitely larger than Kindle 2 - Kindle DX’s display has 2.5 times the surface area of Kindle’s 6-inch display. It's also more expensive - the DX costs $489, $130 more than the Kindle 2.

The new addition to the Kindle family is mainly focused on students and newspaper readers. When we talk about students, we talk of course about textbooks. And there's a good reason for that - the $9.8 billion textbook market which Amazon is hoping to penetrate.

According to Wired, Amazon said it had reached agreements with three major textbook publishers representing 60% of the higher-education market books available in the Kindle store: Pearson Education, Cengage Learning and Wiley Higher Education. Amazon also collaborates with six colleges and universities — Pace, Arizona State, Case Western Reserve, Princeton, Reed College and the University of Virginia — to test the new device with students later this year.

The new Kindle is expected to face couple of challenges, especially when it comes to students. Firstly, it competes with laptop, a device more than 80% own and allow you to buy, download and read e-textbooks, usually on a larger screen. Also, the Kindle can't show video or color images, which is a big disadvantage especially with the growing power of video content (the Kindle DX is designed to mimic the experience of reading printed black ink on paper).

Another challenge is pricing. e-textbooks are usually cheaper in 50% than paper textbooks, so how much will Kindle's textbooks cost? will they also have price advantage in comparison to textbooks you can download to your laptop, or there won't be any difference. In the meantime, there's no information available yet - the Wall Street Journal reported that a spokeswoman for Pearson said its education division, which publishes textbooks for all grade levels, hasn't yet decided how many titles will be available or how much the Kindle versions will cost.

Besides convincing students why they need to buy Kindle in addition to their laptop (no student will buy the new Kindle instead of laptop), Amazon is facing competition from couple of other companies, as the New York Times reports today. Few companies, according to the NYT, are expected to begin selling portable reading devices in the next year, including Plastic Logic, a well-financed start-up which we wrote about last year, FirstPaper, backed by the publisher Hearst; and Apple.

Jeff Bezos said today that the new Kindle is a step in the direction of a long-dreamed-of paperless society. His vision of paperless society is definitely one we can identify with as it will be also an important step towards sustainable reading.

Nevertheless, we're still waiting for more assurance that Kindle is the right tool to achieve this goal, and that it doesn't have any environmental impacts that would be greater than its positive contribution to the environment. As soon as we'll have more conclusive data with regard to this issue, we will be able to look at the Kindle as a green solution, but at the moment we will lack the necessary information to be able to determine that.

More posts on Amazon:

Amazon did great on the first quarter. Can it also help the book industry to go green now?

Kindle2 series:
Part 1 - David Pouge and the final battle

Part 2 - Bezos on the Daily Show

Part 3 - How much money it will make?

Part 4 - Authors Guild and the read-aloud feature

Part 5 - Did you kindle today?

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris
www.ecolibris.net

Eco-Libris is partnering with neighBORROW.com

Bill McKibben says in his book 'Deep Economy' that in the developed world a sense of community is likely to make people happy much more than money. And he's definitely right. Therefore, we're very happy to announce our new partnership with a new venture that is looking to provide this sense of community - neighBORROW.com.

So what is neighBORROW?

neighBORROW combines the traditional notion of borrowing a cup of sugar from a neighbor with modern technology, using the Internet to facilitate borrowing and lending of nearly anything among people in existing local communities and other established networks.

another answer... neighBORROW is a free, interactive web site that boasts a real-time, centralized and consolidated database that identifies books, movies, CDs, and other miscellaneous items that may be available to borrow in your apartment building, office building, neighborhood, school, place of worship or from any group of people imaginable.

How it supports the environment? When people buy things and use things more efficiently, there is less of a demand for natural resources needed to make these items. For example, if you borrow a book from a friend, rather than buying a copy of your own, you are helping to save the tree needed to make that book. Not to mention the CO2 used for production of other items. Also, since neighBORROW is local, much of the items are shared locally, reducing or eliminating the need for shipping. More generally, more efficient use and conscientious efforts to waste less, gets everyone in better habits and helps everyone realize that the earth's resources are not something that we can take for granted.

Eco-Libris is partnering with neighBORROW to encourage neighBORROW-ers that lend/borrow books to balance out their books by planting trees with Eco-Libris. Eco-Libris will also be integrated into the rating system of neighBORROW, so when neighBORROW-ers use Eco-Libris, their rating (think about eBay sellers' rating) is being improved.

neighBORROW is a very cool idea.The web site instantaneously and electronically catalogs the aggregate collection of all of the items entered by its members into a searchable database. In essence, neighBORROW.com converts this group of neighbors, co-workers, classmates, (even verified strangers) into a fully functioning library of stuff.

The user-friendly interface allows for searching and browsing, and facilitates communication between lenders and borrowers to coordinate real-world exchanges of available, actual things within a neighBORROW hood.

And they aleady have over 5,000 people (neighBORROW-ers) in over 300 places (neighBORROW-hoods) saving money and the environment by borrowing from an inventory of over 10,000 things (neighBORROW-goods) listed and available. They are accepting new neighBORROW-ers in communities, on campuses, and at companies all over the world.

For more information and to become a neighBORROW-er visit their website at http://www.neighborrow.com/

You are also welcome to see Adam Berk, the founder of neighBORROW at MSNBC:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris
http://www.ecolibris.net/

We have a winner on our giveaway of "The Legend of Honey Hollow"

Thanks to all the participants in our giveaway of "The Legend of Honey Hollow".

We got great response to our question what is the best way to teach children to appreciate wildlife both on our blog and on Green Options, where our review was published as well. It looks like the common rule of giving an example also works here, with the added value of presenting children with great stories that helps them learn about it, just like the book we have here.

And we have a winner! Our winner is Big Binder who presented an hybrid approach and wrote the following:

That's a really good question! We spend a lot of time at the Nature Center trying to do just that - they read a book, then take the kids out on a 'tour'. It's a tough balance to teach kids to appreciate wildlife without getting 'too close' and putting themselves in danger of disturbing a habitat.

Congrats to the winner who will receive a copy of "The Legend of Honey Hollow" by Jeanne McNaney. Eco-Libris will also plant one tree for this book!

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris
www.ecolibris.net

We did it! Our Facebook community has grown to over 1,000 members!

We are very happy to announce that we ended a very successful green campaign on Facebook.

The campaign that took place on April focused on our Facebook group and included tree planting, giveaway of green books and an effort to increase our Facebook group to 1000 members.

And we did it! On April 30 we reached our goal and on May 1, we had 1036 members! Now, we're going to plant a tree on behalf of all the 455 new members that joined our group on April, so all together we'll have 455 new trees to be planted with our planting partner AIR in Guatemala.

So it's time to say thank you to all the participants in our campaign - to the new members, to the existing members that encouraged their friends to join, to friends who helped us to spread the word and last but not least - to all of our partners that donated great books for the giveaways we had during the campaign. THANK YOU ALL!

Our work on Facebook though has not ended and we'll continue to provide our growing community with information and updates on our work and quest to make reading more sustainable, photos from the planting areas of course and special offers from our partners.

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris
www.ecolibris.net

Looking for a good green laugh? the Goode Family is (almost) here!

Green issues are usually very serious ones, but then green can also be very funny.

Don't believe me? check out The Goode Family, a new cartoon from Mike Judge, the creator of Beavis and Butt-head and the King of the Hill, is “an animated caricature of every Whole-Foods-shopping, hybrid-driving, African-orphan-adopting, vegan-dog-having do-gooder you’ve ever met.”

The show premieres May 27 on ABC (thanks to Grist for the info) and here's a little taste of it:



Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris
www.ecolibris.net