Our Green City

March 1, 2022
Preschool-Grade 2 In Our Green City, the text describes a somewhat idyllic place where ""we take care of all living things."" These practices include everything from using solar panels and windmills to creating backyard farms and rain gardens. Another focus of the book is community. Told in first-person plural, the book invites the reader into the city's life and depicts diverse families and neighbors meeting on the street, in a garden, and at a block party. The author adds frequent interactive touches (through questions like ""How many wheels can you count?"" or ""Can you spot something fast and something slow?"") that help make the book a good read-aloud for preschoolers. Bright, busy illustrations capture the urban feel as well as environmentally conscious details. At the same time, the city feels reassuringly familiar, like it could be the reader's own home. A closing two-page spread of a backyard highlights ""More Ways to Be Green,"" such as growing herbs in window boxes and using a compost bin. Overall, a light, positive take on urban community and sustainability.

COPYRIGHT(2022) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

May 15, 2022
This panoramic, morning-to-bedtime city tour presents an urban environment sustainably tooled to help all its inhabitants thrive. An omniscient narrator introduces readers to the city's modes of transportation, energy resources, and commercial neighborhood as well as its many places to garden and play. Larmour's charming, digitally finished watercolor and pen-and-ink illustrations present mainly bird's-eye (and occasional worm's-eye) views, but she also shows readers a rain garden, the veggie-rich kitchen of a multiracial family, and a stream teeming with wildlife. Pictures brim with examples of a community focused on renewable energy, from a charging station to a clothesline; a green roof to solar panels and wind turbines. Families might well envy the thriving "green classroom," the playground with tree-spanning bridges, and community garden. The kid-friendly text for each double-page spread ends with a question, inviting enhanced interaction with the pictures. Questions range from the open-ended ("What games will you play?") to the specific ("Can you spot a special visitor sipping from the zinnias?"). A final spread suggests "More Ways To Be Green," such as a compost bin, a rain barrel, and a window box herb garden. People depicted vary in terms of skin tone. (This book was reviewed digitally.) Exemplifying urban diversity and ecological harmony, this city will garner return visits from green-keen readers. (Picture book. 3-7)

COPYRIGHT(2022) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

July 1, 2022

Gr 1-3-For educators who want to buoy children's spirits with a snapshot of what an active green campaign looks like, this book is a cheerful road map. In spread after spread, Lloyd Kyi and Larmour show familiar scenes-crosswalks, community gardens, a family at the kitchen table-where readers can locate all the green choices that have been made toward preserving the planet. Electric cars, pedestrians, and people biking, or scootering have made great transportation choices; a Black child splashing in a puddle includes descriptions of how rain water has been captured for use; there are visible solar panels on a distant house; included is a line about pebbles helping to whisk water away. Every page has details to pore over and squirrel away for discussion; every detail could be expanded upon in the classroom or used in a checklist for children to test out their own green homes. The mood is ebullient, and the information is neutral. This is an accessible way to make the topic of climate change and conservation nonthreatening and imminently doable. VERDICT A great guide for all shelves, and a recommended purchase.-Kimberly Olson Fakih

Copyright 2022 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.