Earth Day Reads

 UNLESS someone like you cares a whole lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.” —The Lorax, by Dr. Seuss

Earth Day is usually on April 22, and although these reads are not necessarily tree hugger reads, it is about making land into a main character in the same way that it is about what happens when we forget that our land, our earth is a main character in our histories.

In Hawaiian thinking, if man leaves the earth alone, it will heal itself. The action the earth asks for  is to pay attention and try not to F it up. Otherwise, we have only ourselves to blame. Some of these books talk about a world where we have F’d it up, so I am including them.

• Dragonfruit by Makiia Lucier - while this is a fantasy, this is also about limited resources, man’s arrogance over all living things, and the ways of knowing that come from living on an island. 

• ‘Āina Hānau: Birthland - These poems, by kānaka ‘õiwi poet Nālani McDougal , weaves her ‘āina through her pieces like a comfort blanket.

• Braiding Sweetgrass for YA by Robin Wall Kimmerer, adapted by Monique Gray Smith - an Indigenous biologist by trade, Kimmerer shares a perspective of nature that reveals ancient intelligence and gifts for the modern world. 
• Meltdown: Earthquake, Tsunami, Nuclear Meltdown in Fukushima - multi-genre non-fiction about the “perfect storm” in Fukushima. By Deirdre Langeland.
• Journey to Tomioka is a graphic novel, fantasy about a brother and sister who live with their grandmother because of the Fukushima disaster. When they lose their grandmother, they need to bring her back into the closed off zone that was their neighborhood. It is not out yet, but this will be linked when the book publishes.