Discover the Real Eco-Heroes!

June 5th is World Environment Day – a day to encourage worldwide awareness and action for the protection of our environment. 

Why focus on the environment for just one day when we can spend a whole month reading, learning, and doing the things that make our planet a better place? We’re kicking off a month of environment-themed books and activities, starting today. Each week, we’ll be picking a specific aspect of the environment on which to focus, and we hope you’ll have as much fun with it as we have had putting it together.

We started off by teaming up with Nature in Focus for a contest that’s sure to set tongues wagging. If you missed hearing about the contest, you can still send in your entries to win a copy of the book ‘Stick Your Tongue Out’ and a T-shirt with an illustration from the book! Find more details about the contest here.

Walking in the Wild by Sejal Mehta and Barkha Lohia

Zakhuma works as a forest guard and wildlife photographer with the Mizoram Forest Department in Dampa Tiger Reserve in Mizoram. This is one of India’s more remote tiger reserves with a very difficult terrain. This self-taught photographer has created a valuable archive of photographs of Dampa’s biodiversity: plants, animals, insects, amphibians, reptiles, birds, mosses and fungi. Join him on a walk through the jungle and meet the different animals who live there and what it means to protect them and their home.

Jadav ‘Mulai’ Payeng is a conservationist and recipient of the Padmashree, one of the highest civilian honours awarded by the Indian government. Jadav lives in Majuli, Assam. At the age of 16, distressed by the sight of dying snakes that had washed up on a sandbar banking the Brahmaputra, Jadav decided to plant some trees in the spot. He started small, with bamboos, and grew an entire forest, plant by painstaking plant. Over the next three decades, Jadav and his tree-planting have managed to change the soil in the barren area. The 550-hectare sandbar is now a lush, dense forest and home to a variety of flora and fauna, including elephants, tigers, apes, deer and many species of local and migratory birds. Jadav continues to visit and nurture his forest every day, planting wherever he finds empty patches.

A Tiny Seed: The Story of Wangari Maathai by Nicola Riddisjk and Maya Marshak

Wangari Muta Maathai was an internationally renowned Kenyan environmental political activist and Nobel laureate. She founded the Green Belt Movement, an environmental non-governmental organization focused on the planting of trees, environmental conservation, and women’s rights. This lovely book from BookDash introduces readers to the little girl who worked in the fields with her mother and who was worried when she saw the big forests disappearing.

Welcome to the Forest by Bhavna Menon and Kavita Singh Kale

The Last Wilderness Foundation is an NGO that works in urban and rural areas with children to spread awareness about wildlife and biodiversity, and sensitise them towards conservation and the environment. In January 2017, the Last Wilderness Foundation in association with the Kanha Forest Department conducted a camp for 23 visually impaired students from the Ananya Manav Sai Samiti, Jabalpur. ‘Welcome to the Forest’ is their story.

We hope you enjoy these reads and tune in to our #EnvironmentMonth updates throughout the month of June!