Monday, April 14, 2008

Monday's green books series: Eco Babies Wear Green

Today on our Monday's green books series, I'm reviewing for the first time a board book for toddlers. If you're looking for a first green book for your young kids, this might be it.

Our book for today is:

Eco Babies Wear Green



Author: Michelle Sinclair Colman. Illustrated by Nathalie Dion.

Michelle Sinclair Colman is the creator of the Urban Babies Wear Black series. She lives in Waccabuc, New York.

Nathalie Dion studied design art at Concordia University. She lives in Montreal, Canada.

Publisher: Tricycle Press (an imprint of
Ten Speed Press)

Published in: April 2008

What it is about (from the publisher's website):The urban babies have gone green! Whether living life in the fast-carpool-lane, or eating locally grown produce, you'll find these trendy tots going the extra mile to reduce, reuse, and recycle. It's the fifth book in the best-selling toddler series, which also includes books such as
Beach Babies Wear Shades and Urban Babies Wear Black.

Why you should get it:

This board book is for kids 1-3 years old, so I tried to find out a kid in this age that I could read this book to him or her and see if they like it or not. Finally I found Rainy, my friends' daughter who is 2 years old, the perfect age to test book.

Bottom line: Rainy loved the book. She made me read it to her three times and then read it few times by herself. She can't read yet, but she got connected very easily to the beautiful illustrations of Nathalie Dion and memorized easily some of the lines. She didn't understand all the green activities that the eco babies are doing in the book (eco babies save water looked to her as eco babies just get wet..). Some are definitely not easy to explain to young kids, like composting or recycling, but it might be that with few more readings they will be clearer.

I also enjoyed the green ideas brought up in this book and the witty combination of text and illustrations. I think it's a great way to get toddlers connected with green ideas and hopefully they will remember this positive images of of all these green activities, like eating local, saving water, loving nature and others for the rest of their life.

If you're looking for other interesting green books, you are invited to check out our green books page on our website's green resources section.

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: plant a tree for every book you read!