Education

The Riverkeepers: Two Activists Fight to Reclaim Our Environment as a Basic Human Right

John Cronin and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

“A modern-day David and Goliath tale, The Riverkeepers is an impassioned firsthand account by two advocates who have taken on powerful corporate and government polluters to win back the Hudson River. John Cronin and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., tell us how we too can fight for our fundamental right to enjoy our invaluable natural resources. Revealing shocking stories of commonplace environmental crime — from drinking water tainted with hospital waste to fish populations contaminated by freely dumped PCBs — Cronin and Kennedy describe their dramatic confrontations with more than ninety environmental lawbreakers. The Riverkeepers is a timely call to action that will resonate across America as the backlash spearheaded by congressional leaders and their major corporate allies threatens to reverse the hard-won victories in environmental law and policy.”

Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore

Elizabeth Rush

“With every passing day, and every record-breaking hurricane, it grows clearer that climate change is neither imagined nor distant—and that rising seas are transforming the coastline of the United States in irrevocable ways. In Rising, Elizabeth Rush guides readers through some of the places where this change has been most dramatic, from the Gulf Coast to Miami, and from New York City to the Bay Area. For many of the plants, animals, and humans in these places, the options are stark: retreat or perish in place.

Weaving firsthand testimonials from those facing this choice—a Staten Islander who lost her father during Sandy, the remaining holdouts of a Native American community on a drowning Isle de Jean Charles, a neighborhood in Pensacola settled by escaped slaves hundreds of years ago—with profiles of wildlife biologists, activists, and other members of these vulnerable communities, Rising privileges the voices of those too often kept at the margins.”

Looking for Longleaf: The Fall and Rise of an American Forest

Lawrence S. Earley

“Covering 92 million acres from Virginia to Texas, the longleaf pine ecosystem was, in its prime, one of the most extensive and biologically diverse ecosystems in North America. Today these magnificent forests have declined to a fraction of their original extent, threatening such species as the gopher tortoise, the red-cockaded woodpecker, and the Venus fly-trap. Conservationists have proclaimed longleaf restoration a major goal, but has it come too late?

In Looking for Longleaf, Lawrence S. Earley explores the history of these forests and the astonishing biodiversity of the longleaf ecosystem, drawing on extensive research and telling the story through first-person travel accounts and interviews with foresters, ecologists, biologists, botanists, and landowners. For centuries, these vast grass-covered forests provided pasture for large cattle herds, in addition to serving as the world’s greatest source of naval stores. They sustained the exploitative turpentine and lumber industries until nearly all of the virgin longleaf had vanished.

Looking for Longleaf demonstrates how, in the twentieth century, forest managers and ecologists struggled to understand the special demands of longleaf and to halt its overall decline. The compelling story Earley tells here offers hope that with continued human commitment, the longleaf pine might not just survive, but once again thrive.”

And more…

Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer

Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming by Paul Hawken

Porkopolis: American Animality, Standardized Life, and the Factory Farm by Alex Blanchette (coming May 1st, 2020)

Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder by Richard Louv

Bird Sense: What It’s Like to Be a Bird by Tim Birkhead

The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert

Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey

The River Why by David James Duncan

For Kids

Water-related Reading

The Drop in my Drink: The Story of Water on Our Planet by Meredith Hooper (grades 3-7)

Water, Water! by Gareth Stevens (grades 3-6)

A Drop Around the World by Barbara Shaw McKinney and Michael S. Maydak (grades 2-6)

One Well: The Story of Water on Earth by Rochelle Strauss (grades 4-6)

Watching Water Birds by Jim Arnosky (grades 2-6)

Wetlands by Marcia Freeman (grades K-2)

Between Cattails by Terry Tempest Williams (grades K-4)

The Sea, The Storm, and The Mangrove Tangle by Lynne Cherry (grades 3-7)

Water Wars: The Fight to Control and Conserve Nature’s Most Precious Resource by Olga Cossi (grades 6+)

Environmental Reading

Coqui y Sus Amigos: Los Animales de Puerto Rico / Coqui and His Friends: The Animals of Puerto Rico by Alfonso Silva Lee (grades 3-6)

Aliens from Earth: When Animals and Plants Invade Other Ecosystems by Mary Batten (grades 3-6)

The Lorax by Theodor Seuss Geisel / Dr. Seuss (grades PreK-6)

All the Way to the Ocean by Joel Harper (grades 5-8)

Wastes by Christina Miller (grades 6+)

Hazardous Waste by Allen Stenstrup (grades 4-8)

What a Load of Trash!: Rescue Your Household Waste by Steve Skidmore (grades K-6)

Crinkleroot’s Guide to Knowing Animal Habitats by Jim Arnosky (grades PreK-5)