Green Book Display

While published for students ages 8-12, this illustrated nonfiction work is designed to make climate change accessible to learners of all ages, even the complex aspects of climate change. It is organized into concise sections (e.g. rising sea levels, plastic pollution, wildfires, loss of forests) that show “before vs. after” scenarios to highlight how human actions have disrupted Earth systems. The way the book is formatted clearly shows students the impact of humans on our environment.

One of its strengths is that it doesn’t dwell in doom. For instance, each section includes “What You Can Do” steps (e.g. reusing paper, planting trees, engaging in citizen science) and examples of real-world responses. What makes this book even more appropriate is that you can choose to read individual chapters based on your interest in order to spark conversation about a topic you're excited about. This work illustrates how accessible scientific literacy supports sustainable living by empowering individuals (especially younger people) to understand causes, effects, and possible mitigation strategies in a hopeful framework.

Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma is a deep dive into the hidden systems that bring food from soil (or factory) to plate. He traces four distinct “meals” from most processed corn-based diets to the least processed hunter gather diet of our genetic ancestors. He is able to discuss each of these meal types with distinct clarity because he's experimenting with them on himself, allowing him to become fully immersed on the environmental, ethical, and health trade-offs of each.

Pollan challenges us to ask not only what we eat, but how and why, measuring the hidden costs (fossil fuel use, ecological damage, animal welfare) behind supposedly benign labels like “organic.” He argues that even “organic” systems can have unforeseen negative impacts, and warns that large-scale organic agriculture sometimes masks its dependence on industrial systems that the organic industry is supposedly countering.

With regards to sustainability, The Omnivore’s Dilemma offers a compelling lens: it doesn’t simply promote one “right” diet, but invites critical reflection on the systems underlying our food choices. It helps readers connect individual eating decisions to broader ecological and social realities, making it a powerful tool allowing for literate, reflective, and sustainable consumption.

In Save the People!, McAnulty takes a bold approach: she frames climate change and ecological threats through the lens of potential risk, exploring past mass extinctions, potentialy future disasters (asteroids, viruses, solar changes), and current human-driven impact (carbon emissions, resource depletion, conflict). Despite its serious subject matter, the writing style is fresh and conversational, wry and occasionally humorous. Ultimately it makes weighty science engaging rather than overwhelming. 

Significantly, McAnulty insists that humans are in fact not helpless: she dedicates portions to actionable steps readers can take now (e.g. dietary shifts, energy choices, activism), backed by science and accessible reasoning. With regards to sustainability, this book offers a different perspective: not just incremental change, but framing the stakes in human survival and inspiring urgent agency. It also works well for sparking critical reflection on how individual and collective choices connect to large‐scale planetary outcomes.

As you can telkl by the cover, Beetles for Breakfast is a visually rich, imaginative work, framing future sustainability through quirky, boundary-pushing ideas. In the form of a day-in-the-life narrative, readers explore how up-and-coming green inventions might potentially weave into daily life — from brushing teeth with algae, to “beetle burgers,” to pens with exhaust-fume ink. 

With great craft, Finlay blends science and humor, making the book fun but conceptually grounded. It encourages readers to imagine creative, even radical, changes toward reducing climate impact, and to see “strange” ideas not as science fiction but as convincing experiments.

While other books may emphasize carrying out known sustainability practices, Beetles for Breakfast pushes the imagination and expands the horizon of potential futures. It encourages readers to think outside conventional “reduce/reuse/recycle” boxes and consider how innovation, creativity, and playful thinking can contribute to sustainable living.

Eating to Save the Planet is yet another illustrated and accessible book written for young readers, inviting them to better understand the journey from farm to plate. Ultimately, it aims to help young people recognize how dietary choices connect to environment, health, and justice. Through creative infographics and narrative, Broyles shows the enormous footprint that animal agriculture contributes to greenhouse gas emissions, land use change, and water stress. However, she uses this framework to then explore solutions through alternatives such as plant-based diets as a way to counteract the impact of animal agriculture.

While promoting a diet that likely few follow on a junior high campus, it speaks directly to a pivotal aspect of sustainability: what we eat. It helps readers see that diet choices are not merely personal preferences but actions with environmental consequences. And it does so in a way that is visually friendly, digestible (pun intended), and oriented toward empowerment rather than guilt.

Worms Eat My Garbage is a classic, user-friendly guide to vermicomposting, the fancy word that means turning kitchen food waste into nutrient-rich compost using worms. Appelhof and Olszewski outline the steps of creating bins, feeding worms, maintaining moisture and aeration, troubleshooting common problems, and harvesting the compost. Their central philosophy is that organic “waste” isn't waste at all and is really a resource waiting to be recycled: that we should close the loop on what we discard. 

The accessible, often hands-on approach makes this book readily applicable to small growing operations. At our school in particular, we're going to start small vermicomposting on the patio in the library with food scraps to help create fresh compost to add to our vertical gardens to help make our plants, fruits, and vegetables nutrient-rich and hearty. No longer will that uneaten food from the cafeteria go to waste!

In terms of sustainability, Worms Eat My Garbage serves as a bridge between knowledge and action. It shows how small-scale, decentralized composting can reduce landfill burden, cut methane emissions, enrich soils, and reconnect people with biological cycles. In other words: practical sustainability you can put in a bin under your sink.