English
4-10
Climate Justice
Historical Figures
Activism
Community
Teamwork
Global Community
Young People Making Change
Loll Kirby & Adelina Lirius
summary
I’ve had books for older readers the past few weeks for #SweetsAndSocialJustice but this one is for the typical picture book audience of 4-10 years. To accompany this book, I used up a bunch of ingredients in my kitchen (it’s getting pretty sparse, since we’re moving soon) and made a marbled almond flour banana bread.
Old Enough to Save the Planet is not only gorgeous, but it’s based on real-life kids getting involved in the fight for climate justice! The book profiles a dozen kids across the globe that are actively involved in making their environment and community better by having more sustainable habits and environmentally friendly practices.
There are many aspects of sustainable practices that affect global health, and this book covers many of them. Adeline reintroduces native plants to help with flooding, Eunita developed a community garden that helps with pollution, and Nikita turns school food waste into community compost. At the Hengde School in China, the students collect and reuse rainwater! The illustrations are lush, and the text is scattered throughout the double page spreads giving explanations of what different characters are doing. I really like how this can be adapted for different age and interest levels. Readers with shorter attention spans can just read the basic explanation and look at the pictures, while more engaged readers can pore over all of the facts in smaller text. I love how the individuals features are called Changemakers, empowering them to the reader and the reader themselves. In the back is additional information with ideas of changes the reader can make in their own life as well as ideas for local activism.
This book is published and was sent by Magic Cat Publishing, but all opinions are my own!
Recipe: Almond Flour Banana Bread
Ingredients:
“Regular” Recipe:
3 very ripe bananas (amounting to 1.25c mashed)
3 eggs
3T milk (I use soy)
.25c brown sugar
1t vanilla
2.5c almond flour
.5c flax meal (I make my own, just blitz the seeds in a food processor)
1t cinnamon
1t baking soda
.5t salt
.75c chocolate chips (optional, but makes it sweeter. I use dark chocolate)
Changes for chocolate banana bread:
I substitute .5c cocoa powder for .5c almond flour and omit the cinnamon. You can also use espresso powder instead of the cinnamon!
Directions: Preheat oven to 350. Whisk all the wets together in a bowl, and do the same for the dries in a separate bowl. When I’m making a double batch to marble it, I make the regular first and then the chocolate to cut down on the amount of dishes I use! Combine the dries into the wets and then fold in chocolate. For this particular recipe I omitted the chocolate from the regular. If you’re making a double batch, I use a 13×9 pan lined with parchment. If you’re making a single batch, I use an 8″ round cake tin. Bake for 45 min-1 hour, until a tester comes out clean.
Loll Kirby
From her website: “I grew up a in a little village in Hampshire (in the UK) but through the pages of the books I read, I felt as though I also kind of lived in Narnia, in Malory Towers, underneath the floorboards with the Borrowers or in a warm, messy, love-filled kitchen inhabited by Shirley Hughes’ characters.
Loving books and reading with a passion, the obvious choice was for me to do a degree in economics (yep, I still have NO idea what happened there…), but eventually I came to my senses and trained to be a primary school teacher.
I loved working with the children in my classes and stories were an integral part of every day for us. My dream of inspiring a lifelong love of reading meant that I spent whole weekends browsing in children’s bookshops, which helpfully enabled me to justify buying books by the wagon-load (reader, a confession… I would have bought them anyway!).”
Adelina Lirius
From her website: “My name is Adelina Lirius, I work as an illustrator based in Stockholm, Sweden.
Ever since I can remember I have loved drawing and painting.
Today I am happy to be working with something I truly enjoy doing.
I spend a lot of time in my studio working on different ideas. I often like to paint imaginary scenes, portraying nature and illustrating the different cultures that I grew up with.
My art is often detailed, playful, imaginary with storytelling.”