If you’re looking for the best Earth Day books to teach your kids about how to protect this glorious planet of ours, this is the post for you. Check out our favorite Earth Day books for kids!
Celebrate our Beautiful Planet With These Fabulous Earth Day Books!
On one beautiful day every year, boys and girls, young and old, come together worldwide with one common goal: celebrating our magnificent planet. In anticipation of the occasion, children from America to Australia will spend time educating themselves about the Earth and reading fabulous, vibrant Earth Day books about our beautiful planet.
But why is it so important to come together on one day every year?
Celebrating Earth Day provides us an important reminder about the fragility of our wondrous world.
It reminds us to take care of the Earth and protect its precious resources, while simultaneously raising awareness about pollution and the devastation it is causing to our planet.
Earth Day also reminds us to notice the plants growing, the flowers blooming, the rivers rushing outside and the fireflies sparking in the onyx sky. It gently prods us to notice the awe-inspiring wonder in the great outdoors and to remember how important these wonders are for our developing children.
Earth Day Books Make it Earth Day, Every Day
Short of spending time in the great outdoors, one of the ways I gently remind my kids of the magic that can be found in nature is by reading them amazing stories — not only on Earth Day, but all year round. Whether the books we pick up are about nurturing gardens, making treehouses, or learning about the beautiful flora and fauna that grows outside, Earth Day books bring the outdoors in and always remind us to take care of our beautiful planet.
If you find yourself longing for enchanting Earth Day books about our planet and all of its natural wonders, I’ve got good news — this post has got you covered! Here are some of our favorite Earth Day books for kids – both fiction and nonfiction alike.
Happy reading!
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Frequently asked questions
Earth Day is a wonderful time to teach children about the fragility of our wondrous planet. We teach kids to take care of the earth and its precious resources, while also raising awareness about pollution and climate change.
Absolutely! We have a blog post devoted to plants, so check out this wonderful list of children’s books about plants!
For little kids, I love starting with Todd Parr’s The Earth Book. It is simple, vibrant, and a great way to begin a conversation about Earth Day. For bigger kids, I will forever adore both My Friend Earth, by Patricia McLachlan and Francesa Sanna, and The Curious Garden, by Peter Brown, which is based on the Highline in New York City. Both of them are breathtaking!
Our favorite Earth Day books for kids!
With its die-cut Earth on the cover, this is a fabulous book for your littlest readers all about our planet. From environmental protection and conservation to actual tips on how children can care for the planet, this one is a guaranteed winner! Simple, yet so powerful and accessible.
To say this book is stunning is an understatement — it blew me away on the first read with its prose, beauty, and very essence. Here, Earth is personified as a young girl who wakes from a winter’s nap and gently travels through the seasons, tending to animals, stilling the wind, and sprinkling whisper-soft snow. Through innovative die-cut pages and poetic language, this beautiful ode to Earth encourages children young and old to marvel at the wonders of the world and explore the great outdoors. A treasure in every way!
This is a quietly beautiful story about a boy in a dreary town who discovers a straggling garden while out on a walk one day. He decides to care for it, nurturing it with love, patience, and perseverance, even after it is harmed by the elements. Once he nurtures the garden, it grows and grows, bringing life to the city and blue to the skies. This book is stunning both in story and illustration, with themes of perseverance, environmental activism, and community improvement. It is one of our very favorite read-alouds for kindergarten on up.
Juana Martinez Neal can do no wrong, and her newest book Is the story of Zonia, a young girl whose home is in the majestic Amazon rainforest. The rain forest call to Zonia every morning, from the sloths to the anteaters to the jaguars, and Zonia always answers. But when the rainforest calls to her in despair one day upon becoming a victim of deforestation, how will she respond? Zonia is an Asháninka girl, and I love the way the back matter includes an Asháninka translation of the story, information on the community, and terrific resources on the Amazon rain forest.
This beautiful Native American picture book is inspired by indigenous-led movements across America — ones that invite young readers to stand up and speak out for the protection of our environment and the safeguarding of our waters from harm and pollution. Told through vivid imagery, including a black snake threatening to poison our waters, a young water protector takes a stand to protect our most important and vital resource. Stunning!
This is a fabulous book for any child wanting to learn about Earth’s long history and the science that has gotten our planet to where it is today. From the very origins of Earth to the lasting effect of machinery on our climate, this book teaches the littlest kids about climate change and how we can work as one great community and team to solve it. This wonderful read will spark young activists to make lasting change!
There’s something so inspiring when reading to kids about other children using their voices to make indelible changes, and young readers will be intrigued as they learn the stories of twelve kids around the globe who are working to raise awareness as they do their parts to save our planet. From Felix in Germany who is a passionate reforestation activist, to Nikita in Ukraine who turns his school’s food waste into compost for his city, this is a fabulous read to teach kids that saving our planet begins with each and every one of us — in our own homes, neighborhoods, and communities.
In this fabulous (and beautifully illustrated!) book inspired by Greta Thunberg’s courageous stand to save the world, a young girl named Greta lives in a beautiful forest. She’s facing a mighty challenge: the forest’s survival is threatened by giants who have chopped down all the trees for houses, which were used to form big cities… and which has caused the forest to nearly disappear. But there are animals in the forest, animals whose very survival is threatened if the forest disappears forever. Will Greta be able to save them? Is her small voice big enough to make a difference?
In this darling book, Millie has just moved to America from a place across the ocean. Life in her new city feels gray, until Millie has a grand idea that’s soft and bright and makes her bounce. A garden! Her school has just the perfect roof for it, too, but now she has to convince her classmates and teacher to implement her idea. When everyone jumps on board, Millie and her classmates realize it takes patience and lots of work to build a garden. In fact, it takes a whole community! But thanks to the garden, the community comes together and helps Millie’s new city feel more like home.
How I love this lyrical book about our one earth! In simple language, it teaches kids the basics of our earth: from the big bang to the Milky Way to the planets and atmosphere and to all the things living on earth. It is a fabulous primer for our kids, and it is a reminder that we can all do even one tiny action to save our one special planet. “Earth is our one and only planet to care for, love, and preserve.” A beauty!
This is such a great interactive read that outlines our climate and how it has changed throughout our history. It explores how climate change is causing rising sea levels, droughts, and extreme weather patterns, and the spinner on each page helps children understand what happens if we take no action, versus what happens if we actually try to do something about it.
I absolutely adore this story, which is a fantastic Earth Day book! When a wild wind blows on the tippy-top of a steep hill, everything goes wild for the man who lives there. Kate takes it upon herself to help him tame the wind — with trees, of course. With themes of both friendship and the importance of trees in our world, this is a total winner.
“I don’t want you to be hopeful. I want you to panic…I want you to act as if our house is on fire. Because it is.” When she was just fifteen years old, Greta Thunberg learned from a teacher at school that the climate is changing and life as we know it here on Earth is being threatened by our actions — and our inaction — each and every day. It was at that time she decided that if the adults weren’t going to do anything to save the planet, she would have to take charge. Young readers will be blown away by the way Greta used her voice for powerful change. This is a wonderful Earth Day book to convey that even the smallest of us can make a difference in our world.
If you want to wow your children with an oversized Earth Day book that will enthrall, delight and captivate, this is it, friends! This giant book follows a young girl and her little brother as they tend to a garden through the seasons, complete with flaps to lift, gorgeous illustrations, interesting facts, and delightful surprises. A book to pore over and explore, the impressiveness of this gorgeous book, together with its detailed descriptions, make this a winner for home or the classroom.
This gentle, rhyming book is a perfect introduction to the many wonders the Earth provides for young readers. Whether jumping in puddles or leaf piles, building snowmen or sandcastles, the Earth is always giving us more delights to explore — and we therefore have an obligation to protect it and respect it!
This is a wonderfully informative book for kids that teaches them all they need to know about our environment — from pollution to renewable sources of energy, from how to make your home more energy efficient to what items are actually recyclable. With easy to digest information and longer passages for those children ready to tackle more comprehensive text, we love the way this book appeals to kids of all ages and teaches them how they can get involved in the race to save our planet.
This is such a fun Earth Day book for kids that makes for a perfect read aloud at home or in the classroom! If you want to teach children about how to be an Earth Hero, you will love this book about one class’s monthly letter exchange with Earth, and the simple things Earth teaches the students to help save the planet. This is such a wonderful way to encourage kids to recognize our own unique and special bonds with our incredible planet!
With lyrical, poetic prose perfect for little bookworms, this charming story walks children through the manner in which garden’s grow. From sprouts to buds to blooms, life buzzes in gardens, both on top of and underneath the soil. This one is lovely to read aloud, and its factual back matter makes this a perfect book for kids who want to immerse themselves in a beautiful story, while learning from it at the very same time.
One day in the Amazon, a man tires quickly after trying unsuccessfully to chop down a giant Kapok tree. He lays down to nap, and as he sleeps, all of the forest’s animals – and even a young boy from the Yanomamo tribe – whisper to him about the importance of the trees to their own survival, the impact they have on the natural world, and how all living things depend on one another. This is a beauty, both in terms of illustration and text.
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