Description
Temporarily out of stock
Title: Touch the Earth
Author: LENNON JULIAN/DAVIS BART
Illustrator: COH SMILJANA (ILL)
Format: HARDCOVER
Publication date: 11/04/2017
Imprint: SKY PONY PRESS
Price: $32.00
Publishing status: INDENT ONLY
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER!
Jump aboard the White Feather Flier, a magical plane that can go wherever you want. Just press a button printed on the page, and point the plane up in the air to fly, or down to land it. The Flier’s mission is to transport readers around the world, to engage them in helping to save the environment, and to teach one and all to love our planet. Fly to the top of a mountain. Send clean water to thirsty people. Dive deep into the ocean (the Flier turns into a submarine!) to pick up pollution and bring back the fish. Explore the planet, meet new people, and help make the world a better place.An inspiring, lyrical story, rooted in Lennon’s life and work, with beautiful illustrations that bring the faraway world closer to young children. The book includes words to a special poem written by Julian Lennon, specifically for Touch the Earth. Touch The Earth is the first book in a planned trilogy. A portion of the proceeds from books sales will go to support the environmental and humanitarian efforts of the White Feather Foundation.Kirkus Reviews (02/15/2017):
A pro bono Twinkie of a book invites readers to fly off in a magic plane to bring clean water to our planet’s oceans, deserts, and brown children.Following a confusingly phrased suggestion beneath a soft-focus world map to \”touch the Earth. Now touch where you live,\” a shake of the volume transforms it into a plane with eyes and feathered wings that flies with the press of a flat, gray \”button\” painted onto the page. Pressing like buttons along the journey releases a gush of fresh water from the ground–and later, illogically, provides a filtration device that changes water \”from yucky to clean\”–for thirsty groups of smiling, brown-skinned people. At other stops, a tap on the button will \”help irrigate the desert,\” and touching floating bottles and other debris in the ocean supposedly makes it all disappear so the fish can return. The 20 children Coh places on a globe toward the end are varied of skin tone, but three of the four young saviors she plants in the flier’s cockpit as audience stand-ins are white. The closing poem isn’t so openly parochial, though it seldom rises above vague feel-good sentiments: \”Love the Earth, the moon and sun. / All the children can be one.\” \”It’s time to head back home,\” the narrator concludes. \”You’ve touched the Earth in so many ways.\” Who knew it would be so easy to clean the place up and give everyone a drink? (Picture book. 6-8) COPYRIGHT(2017) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
School Library Journal (03/01/2017):
PreS-Gr 2–Follow the White Feather Flier around the globe to discover places that need help with access to water. This adventure is designed to help readers \”touch the earth\” by learning how to take care of it. The story includes a place where people need water to drink, a deep ocean that needs to be cleaned so that fish will return, a parched desert, and a town that needs its water filtered so people can drink it. With soft, colorful illustrations and simple language, this work is attractive, but the heavy message about the importance of keeping water clean and accessible is not presented effectively. The tale is interactive, in the vein of Herve Tullet’s Press Here and Bill Cotter’s Don’t Push the Button!, but the interactions are shallow. For example, touching a button labeled \”FISH\” results in fish returning to a previously polluted ocean, but there is nothing valuable in the text that would allow children to practice the book’s message in their own neighborhoods. This same level of oversimplification prevails throughout. The regions without access to clean water are places that are populated by people of color and are overseas, which implies that this is a problem found only in certain parts of the world, even though this is a global crisis that affects all races. VERDICT This title fills a need for materials about environmental issues aimed at the kindergarten set, but it’s a pass for most collections.–Paige Garrison, The Davis Academy, Sandy Springs, GA
Copyright 2017 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
ISBN: 9781510720831
Weight: 522g
Dimension: 236mm X 287mm