By Lisa Pimentel Johnson Recycle, Reuse, Recharge, and Renew are the new buzz words these days all over the world. We need to teach our children to take care of their world and correct their parent’s mistakes! I found some fun, educational, colorful “green” books to share and enjoy for young and old alike. Start thinking green.... Michael Recycle by Ellie Bethel and illustrated by Alexandra Colombo is an engaging story about a town called Abberdoo-Rimey where the townspeople have turned grass, flowers, and rivers brown due to pollution. A streak of green crash lands in the town dump. It’s not a bird, nor a plane, but a new kind of superhero named Michael Recycle, who has a plan to save the town and the world. Fresh and funny, Michael Recycle exclaims to the townspeople, “You’ve got to recycle. You’ve got to act soon. Before all your trash reaches up to the Moon!” In response, the townspeople start recycling their paper, plastic, cans, and even old junk like pots and pans. The art is colorful and inventive with using a newspaper print cut out in the art design, and at the end of the book, there is a special section of Go Green Tips to encourage all children to become environmental superheroes in their town! Learning about ecosystems and playing a maze game is part of the creative book by Roxie Munro called EcoMazes, 12 Earth Adventures. Roxie and her husband travelled all over the world researching data to compile in this delightful educational book that will take you to both the South and North Poles and places in between. You and your child can travel along leafy trails, Arctic ice floes, and winding waterways while exploring different environments around the world, from a colorful coral reef filled with sea creatures to a shady forest of tall evergreen trees. Using waterways, trails, or roads, take the shortest path with your finger to the goal. As you journey, you will also discover some 350 animals that live in those ecosystems too! From grass bursting through cracks in a sidewalk, or a tuft of daisies clinging to a crumbling brick wall, to a meadow winding along an abandoned road, nature can blossom in the unlikeliest of places. In the book by Peter Brown, called The Curious Garden, a curious boy named Liam discovers a small struggling garden one day in the most drab, grey city where he lives. In an abandoned railway track in the middle of the city, Liam stumbles on a sprinkle of wildflowers bursting through a patch of mossy green weeds. Liam decides right there to become a gardener and starts to water, prune, and care for his little garden patch. Soon, the magic of water, sun, and tender loving care begin to make the garden grow and creep into all the crevices of the grey, drab city. The city transforms into a vibrant green metropolis with flowers, shrubs, and trees everywhere being taken care of by many new gardeners! Liam teaches us that we can find flowers and fields and even small forests growing wild in every city, you just have to look for them!