Earth Day 2022

Happy Earth Day! Every year on April 22nd, people from all over the world gather together to promote the wellbeing of our planet.

In honor of Earth Day 2022, we are highlighting some of our favorite posts that celebrate our beautiful earth. And join contributor Marek Oziewicz and the Climate Lit team for a fun Earth Day celebration on Friday, April 22nd. Details below.

April 22, 4:00-6:00 pm (CST)

Our Earth is turning 4.543 billion years old, and Climate Lit is turning one! Join us in celebrating a year of accomplishments, dream up the work to come, and articulate a plan of action. You’ll have a chance to get to know the Climate Lit team members, as well as others committed to building climate literacy, including Climate Lit Ambassadors Jon Scieszka, Steven Weinberg, and Adam Gidwtiz. There’ll be opportunities to connect, get involved, win prizes… and a surprise. All are welcome! Come as you are! Be sure to register! Event concluded see video here.

by Melanie Duckworth & Lykke Guanio-Uluru

Plants are ubiquitous in children’s literature, yet as readers, we tend not to notice. In this post celebrating the flora found throughout children's literature, Melanie Duckworth from Østfold University College, Norway and Lykke Guanio-Uluru from HVL, Norway discuss their anthology Plants in Children's and Young Adult Literature (2021) and their vital contribution to critical plant studies.

by Marek Oziewicz

As educators and scholars of children’s literature, how can we be part of the effort to stop the ongoing demolition of the planet and help create an ecological civilization? Join Marek Oziewicz for a special post discussing Climate Lit, an open access resource hub for teaching climate literacy with children’s literature and media. The mission is to provide resources teachers need to do climate literacy work in their classrooms.

by Tanja Nathanael

International Committee blog editor Tanja Nathanael presents a selection of international children’s picture books celebrating Earth Day 2021 and the many ways that we as humans connect with our Earth. These books all invite us to consider our personal relationship with the Earth via a sense of play, activism, and wonder.

by Heidi Hansson & Maria Lindgren Leavenworth

The Arctic has migrated from its stereotypical peripheral position and is beginning to be understood as a globally valuable but also vulnerable area. In this post, Heidi Hansson and Maria Lindgren Leavenworth from Umeå University, Sweden discuss their anthology The Arctic in Literature for Children and Young Adults (Routledge 2020) and investigate how the circumpolar Arctic has been and is represented to a juvenile audience.

by Sinéad Moriarty

Sinéad Moriarty of Trinity College, Dublin and University of Roehampton, London, outlines her study of Antarctica in British Children’s Literature, in which she explores over a century of literary representations of Antarctica for child readers. Using Antarctica as a case study, she examines how the "wild" space of Antarctica is used to reflect heroic masculinity in "Heroic Era" narratives for child readers in the early twentieth century.

by Crystal Veronie

In this post, Crystal Veronie recounts a day spent with Dr. Ann Thwaite, A. A. Milne’s biographer, hiking through Ashdown Forest, the five-hundred-acre wood that inspired Milne’s children’s classics, Winnie-the-Pooh (1926) and The House at Pooh Corner (1928). This activity was part of Dr. Jameela Lares's children's literature study abroad course.