“Now to restore peace, I must find the last dragon. My name is Raya.”
Recommended audience: Ages 4-7, Ages 8-13
Year Published: 2021
Continental Setting: Unspecified
by Jason Chin
“Coast redwoods need a lot of water to grow as tall as they do, and the area in Northern California where they live is perfect – it’s a rain forest.”
Recommended audience: Ages 4-7, Ages 8-13
Year Published: 2009
Continental Setting: North America, United States
“I am your Sun. My energy warms your days. I light up your world. But of all my planets, only one is teeming with life: your Earth. Why? Because it is covered with water – H2O – always moving, always changing, from liquid to solid to vapor and back again.”
Recommended audience: Ages 4-7, Ages 8-13
Year Published: 2017
Continental Setting: Across the World
by Danna Smith
“A rooftop garden is what we need / Friends and family all agree. / A garden starts with hardy seeds. / A rooftop garden is what we need.”
Recommended audience: Ages 0-3
Year Published: 2022
Continental Setting: Unspecified
“Homo Sapiens has grown so accustomed to being the only human species that it’s … eas[y] for us to imagine we’re the pinnacle of creation, separated from the rest of the animal kingdom by an unbridgeable chasm”
Recommended audience: Ages 14+, Ages 8-13
Year Published: 2020
Continental Setting: Across the World
“MyVanee was saving more than a beach.”
Recommended audience: Ages 14+, Ages 4-7, Ages 8-13
Year Published: 2021
Continental Setting: North America, United States
by Jess Keating
“Sharks were not mindless killers. Sharks were beautiful. Sharks were smart. They deserved to be studied, protected, and loved.”
Recommended audience: Ages 4-7, Ages 8-13
Year Published: 2021
Continental Setting: North America
“Everyone needs to help make our planet healthy again. The animals are counting on us!”
Recommended audience: Ages 4-7, Ages 8-13
Year Published: 2020
Continental Setting: North America, United States
by Shaun Tan
“It’s hard to convey how natural it all seemed, and how even the first conversations began without us really noticing.”
Recommended audience: Ages 14+, Ages 8-13
Year Published: 2018
Continental Setting: Unspecified
“Thank you for beginnings, / for endings, / for lifetimes. Thank you for being / our home”
Recommended audience: Ages 0-3, Ages 4-7
Year Published: 2018
Continental Setting: Across the World
“He’s going to do it, she thought. God help us all. He really does mean to save the world”
Recommended audience: Ages 14+
Year Published: 2019
Continental Setting: Europe, Oceania, Unspecified
“When you take more than the land can provide, it stops giving. It can’t give. That’s what’s happened here. That’s what happens with humans.”
Recommended audience: Ages 14+, Ages 8-13
Year Published: 2020
Continental Setting: North America
“This is the biggest story in the world”
Recommended audience: Ages 14+
Year Published: 2022
Continental Setting: Across the World
“He hands me a fistful of vegetable seeds and says, ‘This is our gold’.”
Recommended audience: Ages 4-7, Ages 8-13
Year Published: 2022
Continental Setting: North America, Puerto RIco
by Peter Brown
“The garden had always wanted to explore the rest of the city, and that spring it was finally ready to make its move”
Recommended audience: Ages 0-3, Ages 4-7
Year Published: 2009
Continental Setting: Unspecified
“The Dark was tired of hiding. Nightlights, streetlights, flashlights, and table lamps — all pushed the Dark away. Everyone was afraid of the dark. Everyone wished the Dark would leave.”
Recommended audience: Ages 0-3, Ages 4-7
Year Published: 2022
Continental Setting: Unspecified
“Mostly I wonder if I’m just wrong. I wonder if everyone thinks fracking is more important than my mushrooms, my ramps, and my beechnuts. I wonder if fracking really is more important than the bears, the coyotes, and the wild turkeys.”
Recommended audience: Ages 8-13
Year Published: 2018
Continental Setting: North America
“This is a book that turns itself into dozens of eco-projects to inspire you to think more about the planet we all call home.”
Recommended audience: Ages 4-7, Ages 8-13
Year Published: 2020
Continental Setting: Unspecified
by Dave Eggers
“It is a tendency of the human species to see themselves in everything, to assume all living things, animals in particular, are simply corollaries to humans, but in this book, that is not the case. Here, the dogs are dogs, the birds are birds, goats are goats, the Bison Bison.”
Recommended audience: Ages 14+, Ages 4-7, Ages 8-13
Year Published: 2023
Continental Setting: Unspecified
“For the fate of Fausto did not matter to them.”
Recommended audience: Ages 0-3, Ages 4-7
Year Published: 2019
Continental Setting: Unspecified
by Lamar Giles
“So many times in history it’s the youth who see the clearest and can save the day”.
Recommended audience: Ages 14+
Year Published: 2022
Continental Setting: North America, United States
by Caryl Hart
“Soon I shall grow a whole forest”
Recommended audience: Ages 0-3, Ages 4-7, Ages 8-13
Year Published: 2022
Continental Setting: Unspecified
by Maja Lunde
“But bees cannot be tamed. They can only be tended, receive our care.”
Recommended audience: Ages 14+
Year Published: 2015
Continental Setting: Asia, China, England, Europe, North America, United States
“One snowflake will melt on its own, but billions of them together … are powerful enough to change the face of a planet.”
“Who is it that speaks, / sings and melodies / from those murmuring beaks?”
“Kiri scanned the forest, spotting the panther less than a stone’s throw from where she crouched. Moonlight glinted off the panther’s fiery green eyes as the creature studied her. ‘Follow’, whispered a voice that sounded less like her mother, and more like the hiss of a cat.”
Recommended audience: Ages 8-13
Year Published:
Continental Setting: Unspecified
by Piers Torday
“How could I be so wrong? The stag was right—we can’t trust any other humans. How can you ever trust someone who wants to eat you?”
Earth is in a state of climate emergency. Our mission is to promote climate literacy as a means to transition to an ecological civilization. We offer you the resources to teach about climate change with literature, film, and other media for young people.
Climate Lit is an initiative of the Center for Climate Literacy at the University of Minnesota’s College of Education and Human Development.
