Today's guest blog post is from Heather Doepner, local mom and a children's librarian at Spring Garden Road Library. Heather has some great ideas for eco-books to share with your kids. I admit I had no idea that Nancy Drew had green-themed books – I am definitely out of touch! Thank-you Heather!

Did you know that Earth Day is 40 on April 22nd? I celebrated it for the first time in the late ‘80s with a beach clean-up near my rural home. Now, I outfit my family with trash bags and we do a spring clean up around my urban neighbourhood. My son is still a little young to participate in this year’s activity: at 19 months he still tries to drink from icky abandoned juice boxes he finds at the playground. However, he is learning green habits along with his first words.

As a children’s librarian, I am happy that book borrowing is a great green way to add variety to your home story times. Halifax Public Libraries also has plenty of information books on all sorts of eco-themed topics from global warming to green living. Here are some titles to check out, loosely grouped by age. Most of these books are owned by Halifax Public Libraries.

For toddlers:

• Big Earth, Little Me (Wiley, 2009)
• Don’t Throw That Away: a lift-the-flap book about recycling and reusing (Bergan, 2009)
• What Do You See?: a lift-the-flap book about endangered animals (Krensky, 2009)
• Eco Babies Wear Green (Colman, 2008)

For younger kids:

• Sandy’s Incredible Shrinking Footprint (Handy, 2010)
• Earth Day (McNamara, 2009)
• Stuff!: reduce, reuse, recycle (Kroll, 2009)
• I Can Save the Earth! (Inches, 2008)
• It’s Earth Day! (Mayer, 2008)
• We Are Extremely Very Good Recyclers (Child, 2007)
• Celebrating Earth Day (McDonnell, 1994)
• The Lorax (Seuss, 1971)

For older kids:

• Nancy Drew and the Clue Crew #18: Earth Day Escapade (Keene, 2009)
• Nancy Drew Eco Mystery Triology: Green-Eyed Monster, Green with Envy and Seeing Green (Keene, 2009 and 2010)
• Going Green (Armentrout, 2009)
• Heroes of the Environment: true stories of people who are helping to protect our planet (Rohmer, 2009)
• I Love Dirt: 52 activities to help you and your kids discover the wonders of nature (Ward, 2008)
• True Green Kids: 100 things you can do to save the planet (McKay, 2008)
• Down-to-Earth Guide to Global Warming (Gordon, 2007)

If you aren’t yet acquainted with your public library, here are the basics:

• Apply for a free library card online at halifaxpubliclibraries.ca, or bring home ID to your local branch. Kids can get their own cards too!
• If you had a card but now it is missing, bring ID to get a new one.
• Borrow from one library and return to any other.
• Make a request for free to have an item brought from another branch.
• Download free digital e-books and audiobooks from home and use Tumblebooks (for kids) for free.
• Call 490-5753 for help.