Our Big Home: An Earth Poem This book provides not only an environmentally aware message but a lyrical and visual extravaganza for parents reading with their kids...or to them. Linda Glaser has provided the words, while Elisa Kleven gives us the treats for the eyes: beautiful watercolors. Together, they provide a tale of the coexistence of human beings with other living things on our home: the Earth

  Millbrook Pr Trade; ISBN: 0761312927 (March 2000)

Review by Mary Guthrie (December 2002)
Our Big Home: An Earth Poem is a beautiful little book, one perfect for reading to a little one before bed.

Each page is a small poem, building the message of how we are all interconnected on this blue planet. "We share the water," Glaser writes. "We splash and slosh and swim in water." The building blocks of life on Earth are enunciated, from rain to sunlight to seeds to dirt to air.

And around each poem the page is crammed with crazy quilt watercolored illustrations. The images are full of movement and joy. My little girl and I delighted in searching the pages for tiny details, like the cat catching a flower, or the tiny bird nesting on a donkey’s back.

By the time the reader reaches the end of Our Big Home, children and animals are joined in a conga line that seems to embrace oceans and skies. Independent readers who like poetry will enjoy reading Our Big Home. It should also help the youngest book lovers to realize all that is beautiful on Earth, and how we should play a role in protecting it.

Eight-year-old Madeleine says, "Parents will love this book too. It’s a great book for the environment."

To learn more about the reviewer, Mary Guthrie, click here.

To see Generation Green's reading list for kids and intermediate readers, click here.