Mr. Greenjeans: Arthur Turns Green by Marc Brown

Arthur was late for dinner.

"You owe me big time," said D.W. "I had to set the table, and that's your job!"

"Sorry," said Arthur. "I had to deal with the Big Green Machine at school."

Then D.W. saw Arthur's green hands.

"That machine is turning Arthur GREEN!" she thought.

Arthur is acting funny again. He goes around the house scribbling down notes and unplugging cellphone chargers and D.W.'s absolutely essential night lights and mumbling about a Big Green Machine. Then he comes home with green hands! And then Dad's hands and knees turn green, too!

Neither one of them seems concerned about their change in skin color. And then D.W. learns that she has to go to Arthur's school open house where this Big Green Machine is kept. Is it going to get her and turn her green, too?

Of course, in Mark Brown's first new Arthur Adventure in ten years, Arthur Turns Green (Arthur Adventure Series) (Little, Brown, 2011), going green is a good thing--the object of Mr. Ratburn's new mega-project for his long-suffering third grade class. Buster offers to solve the garbage problem by eating more food so it won't become landfill; Muffy's idea of recycling is selling her used clothes so she can buy more, Binky resolves to collect cast-off aluminum soft drink cans for recycling, and Arthur takes on his own family's use of energy. He turns off appliances right and left and takes the shortest showers ever while he compiles a list to make his family the greenest in town. Dad pitches in to help paint and prepare the project, and they both emerge green in more ways than one from their close encounter with the garden plants and the poster paint, and pre-schooler D.W. is afraid that she's next if she gets anywhere near that scary Big Green Machine.

It's a nostalgic welcome back to Arthur, who's spent the last ten years on hiatus from publishing while he became a television star and staple on the much lauded PBS Kids line-up. The Arthur stories have remained popular, and it's good to have the evergreen Arthur back in book form, especially in this green time of year.

Keeping Greens Green: Nibbles: A Green Tale by Charlotte Middleton

...Every guinea pig in Dandeville loved dandelion leaves. All day long, happy sounds of munching and nibbling filled the air.

Until, one day, that is. Dandelion leaves began to run out.

Christopher Nibbles is just like the rest of the guinea pigs in his town. He loves munching dandelion leaves, and at first they are everywhere. But as the dandelion mania takes over the town, they begin to disappear, nibbled right down to the ground. A sign in the local diner says it all:

MENU TODAY

CABBAGE AND LETTUCE WRAPS ON A BED OF CABBAGE LEAVES

CABBAGE SOUP

CABBAGE AND BROCCOLI QUICHE

Only Nibbles notices why the dandelions are disappearing. The eager eaters of Dandeville are nibbling them down to the stems before they get a chance to flower and scatter their seeds to replant themselves. Then Nibbles spies a happy sight under his bedroom window--the last dandelion plant in town, perhaps in the whole world! Nibbles searches the Internet and visits the library to research dandelion culture, and soon he knows all about composting and cultivating the elusive dandelion and transplants it to a carefully manicured bed.

Nibbles carefully watches his plant mature in secrecy until at last it produces a gloriously white head of seeds. And then it's off to the top of Daisy Chain Hill he goes and with a propitious breeze, he scatters his ripe seeds in the wind to reseed the beloved food crop all over town.

Charlotte Middleton's Nibbles: A Green Tale (Marshall Cavendish, 2010) is an English transplant which is sure to take root wherever Earth Day is celebrated and wherever this parable of responsible consumption can be read. Middleton's tone is gentle, not didactic, and her appealing collage illustrations have texture, depth, and oodles of clever detail (such as the Nibbles' online shopping sites and the book titles in the Dandeville Library) that will appeal to young readers. As Publisher's Weekly says, "Middleton's free-spirited mixed-media illustrations—Nibbles has dimensional whiskers and wears green, floral-print shorts; a “chewy” cabbage appears in photo-collage—keep this allegory about consumption lighthearted."

Free the Tree! Clarice Bean:What Planet Are You From? by Lauren Child

Mrs. Wilberton wants us to do a project called The Environment, which is nature study really.

Nature is something I know a lot about. We have got lots of it in our backyard. There's even nature in the Baldini Brothers yard (although you wouldn't think so to look at it! It's got many cans and concrete and pieces of old cars.)

Robert Granger lives next door, and he's always trying to walk home with me. Lucky I'm a fast walker.

When Clarice Bean gets to school late for the second day in a row, she finds to her dismay that she's assigned to work with Robert Granger on the project. She's underwhelmed by his choice of subject--documenting the racing records of snails and worms--but when Clarice arrives home, an exciting cause is waiting for her. Her 'tweener brother Kurt arrives all hot and bothered about the city's plans to cut down everyone's favorite 100-year-old tree on Navarino Street.

"I won't have any dinner because I am too depressed to chew!" Kurt says.

Grandad switches off the television, so, of course, we know he's upset.

Soon it's a family protest movement. Kurt and his friend Morten set up a tent, prepared to camp around the tree's base to prevent the cutting crew from having their way. Clarice and little brother Noah set out to make signs which read FREE THE TREE, Dad makes veggie spaghetti to feed the demonstrators on site, and Mom climbs right up in the lower branches of the famous tree. Even Robert is intrigued by the sudden eco-activity on Navarino Street.

"Why is your brother camping, Clarice Bean? Is he on vacation?" he asks.

I say, "No one takes a vacation on their own street, nitwit. They're having a protest!"

The protest soon draws the media, and the local newspaper prepares an article with a dramatic photo of the FREE THE TREE protesters, under a banner headline TREE TO BE CHOPPED DOWN ON NAVARINO STREET. And when Clarice arrives for school the next day even later than usual, Mrs. Wilberton threatens to call her mother right away.

Mrs. Wilberton wants to know why I am late again and where the Dickens is my snail and worm project.

"We have been up 'til all hours saving the planet on our street," I say, "She can't get to the phone right now, Mrs. Wilberton, because she's up a tree."

Mrs. Wilbertson says, "Right. That does it, young lady. We do not tolerate nonsense in this class!"

But Robert Granger says, "But it's true, Mrs. Wilberton!" He shows her the picture from the paper. And that's the only time Robert Granger has been useful EVER!

"I have been being an ecowarrior!" I say.

Mrs. Wilberton's smile is a little tight at the edges.

But of course she has to say "Well done, Clarice Bean."

Lauren Child's Clarice Bean, What Planet Are You From? (Candlewick, 2010) has been niftily recycled in its first American paperback edition, with intriguing die-cut covers and Child's perky and popular Clarice Bean's frank asides and expressive face put to good use in a hometown eco-adventure just right for reading during Earth Day activities. The author offers plenty of ecological information along with her droll story of a heroine who is always in on the action, even if it takes her right up a tree.

Save Our Sand! Ballyhoo Bay by Judy Sierra

It's an idyllic scene at Ballyhoo Bay. Artist-in-residence Mira Bella is cheerily teaching painting and sculpting to grannies and kids, crabs and seals, pelicans and squids, and the patrons are eagerly anticipating the coming Ballyhoo Art Festival with its Recycled Art Cycle Chase. But then, one spring day, dire signs appear, proclaiming the end of the people's favorite beach.

Bales of barbed wire appeared on the sand,
With a signpost announcing a dastardly plan.
"Penthouse apartments, $9 zillion each,
A park created where once there was a beach.
A crystal casino, as high as a cloud,
P.S.: No children or wildlife allowed.
Meet us this evening at Ballyhoo Hall
To vote for a plan that enriches us all."

But Mira Bella and the grannies quickly come up with their own anti-development Plan B, and when it's time for a vote count, the Mayor announces that the high-rise development has failed to prevail. Ballyhoo Beach is saved for the public, and the sun sets on a joyous scene.

Mira Bella gazed out through surf and the spray.
As the sun set resplendent on Ballyhoo Bay.
"Truth is beauty," she said,
"And they both saved the day."

There are plenty of Earth Day-friendly stories about planting trees and saving endangered animals, but not too many about forestalling the over-development of our endangered unspoiled beaches. For this reason alone, Judy Sierra's Ballyhoo Bay is a useful addition to the elementary environmental reading shelf. Sierra's verse is light and bouncy, if not inspired, but Derek Anderson's inspired comic illustrations make this new picture book an appealing entry for Earth Day story time.