Bookish Event - The Eco-Libris 41 reasons to plant a tree for your book

Publish Books Without Perished Trees

Eco-Libris Celebrates 41st Annual Earth Day with 41 Reasons to Plant a Tree for Your Book

Eco-Libris, a green company that works to make publishing and reading more sustainable, celebrates the 41st Annual Earth Day (April 22) with its new campaign “41 Reasons to Plant a Tree for Your Book.”

For 41 days, from March 13 culminating with Earth Day on April 22, Eco-Libris will publish the 41 best answers on its blog. Readers who enter the contest will have the opportunity to win prizes courtesy of Eco-Libris’ partners, including a $25 gift card for Strand Bookstore, audiobooks from Simon and Schuster Audio (such as The Half Life by Jennifer Weiner, American Assassin by Vince Flynn and Essence of Happiness by the Dalai Lama) and great green books, including books from the Little Green Books series, Planet Home by Jeffrey Hollender, Spit That Out! by Paige Wolf and The Story of Stuff by Annie Leonard.

“We have planted 180,000 trees on behalf of readers, authors, and publishers working with Eco-Libris,” says Raz Godelnik, co-founder and CEO of Eco-Libris. “We want to hear what readers think about it and why they believe planting trees for their books is a good idea.”

Reader Aleta from Australia says planting a tree for each book makes sense to her because it contributes to ensuring intergenerational equity by sustaining the planet’s natural environment. “This will allow future generations to continue reading paper books and there's something special about reading from paper that I would love my children to experience,” she says.

Author Kelly Barth says, “Though I believe it's important to preserve the real, physical book, I don't believe it’s right to fell old growth forests to fill my shelves. Also, as an author, I want people to have the option to read my new book in the form that has served humans well for centuries.”

The campaign will begin on Sunday, March 13, 2011. To learn more about the campaign, please go to
http://www.ecolibris.net/41reasons.asp. Founded in 2007, Eco-Libris is a green company working to green up the book industry in the digital age by promoting the adoption of green practices in the book industry, balancing out books by planting trees, and helping to make e-reading greener. To achieve these goals Eco-Libris works with book readers, publishers, authors, bookstores, and others in the book industry worldwide. So far Eco-Libris has balanced out more than 169,000 books, which results in more than 180,000 new trees. For more information, please
go to http://www.ecolibris.net

Happy Earth Day! A book review and book giveaway

Happy Earth Day Everyone! In honor of this important day I have a review to share with you and some book giveaways. A few years ago I came across the Sleeping Bear Press alphabet books, and since then I have been a real fan of these terrific books. Last month I reviewed S is for Save the Planet: A How-to-be-Green Alphabet. Here is my review:

S is for Save the Planet: A How-to-be Green Alphabet
Brad Herzog
Illustrated by Linda Holt Ayriss
Non-Fiction
Ages 6 to 9
Sleeping Bear Press, 2009, 1-58536-428-2
Today, perhaps more than ever before, people around the world are growing to appreciate that “every little bit helps” when it comes to protecting the environment. There are many things that children and their families can do to make this world a cleaner, greener, and healthier place to live.
To help children to see that there are so many things that they can do Sleeping Bear Press put together this clever alphabet book. For each letter of the alphabet, the author has found an environmental topic to explore. Many of the topics include suggestions that show children how they can make green choices every day. For example, on the C page we see a child riding to school so that fuel is conserved and so that less pollution ends up in the air. The L page talks about eating food that is grown locally. Eating food that is fresher and that does not have to travel many miles to get to us is a good strategy.
For every letter of the alphabet, the author gives his readers a poem to enjoy. Younger children will like listening to or reading the two rhyming stanzas that compliment the artwork. In addition to the poems, the author has also written a longer piece of descriptive text. This explores the highlighted topic in more detail. This format allows children of a variety of ages to appreciate this valuable title.
This is just one in a series of informative alphabet books published by Sleeping Bear Press.

The people at Sleeping Bear Press have very kindly donated five copies of this book to offer as giveaways. If you would like a copy drop me a line.

In Honor of Earth Day

Earth Day is tomorrow, and in honor of this special day I would like to tell you about two projects that I think children and young people will greatly enjoy being a part of. One is the Lorax Project. This is a program that Conservation International has put together to educate children about the grave dangers that the world's forests face. Better still, the project gives children the ability to do something about the problem. The Lorax Project website is full of tips that show children what they can do on a daily basis to protect our planet. There are also games, activities, downloads, and much more to enjoy on this site.

Planet Connect is another website that young people will find empowering. As they look around the site, young people will see that people from all over the world are doing amazing things to help preserve the environment. Visitors to the site can find out about programs they can join, contests they can enter, and green initiatives that are changing the way people do business. Best of all, young people will be able to see what other people of their own age are doing to make their world greener, cleaner, and healthier.