Review by Booklist Review
Lush landscapes and urgent environmental insights unite in this offering for young readers that emphasizes the critical role plants play in the health of our vulnerable environment. Reunited after prior nonfiction successes (Tiny Creatures, 2014; Many, 2017), zoologist-author Davies and illustrator Sutton make their message here quite clear: "GREEN is the most important color in the world." Sutton's watercolor-and-acrylic illustrations highlight leaves as unifiers of the "great green nations" that sustain air quality on Earth. The artwork also shifts in scale down to a microscopic level in support of evocative language that explains how carbon dioxide "swooshes in through tiny holes" in the leaves while cells densely packed with chloroplasts make "bundles of the greenest green." Davies presents green as far more than just a color and offers a time line to contextualize the eons it took to create a healthy ecosystem and the climate-change precipice on which we now teeter. Although no back matter supports the research, this offers a clear call to action for budding environmentalists to make green their favorite color.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
A conservationist ethos infuses this scientific introduction to the critical role that plant life plays in regulating Earth's climate. Beginning with a single tree, Davies's gently scientific text talks through photosynthesis ("All plants do it. It's the reason why they are green") and its opposite process, respiration ("Together, the two keep our air in balance... just right for life"). A dive into prehistory and evolution further reinforces the unique importance of oxygen to living things as well as explains the origins of fossil fuels and why burning them is making the planet hotter. Concluding pages pay tribute to plant communities--"great green nations"--and forests' essential but human-threatened role balancing the air. A pale-skinned child appears occasionally as a visual guide throughout Sutton's signature-style watercolor and acrylic paintings, which blend varied verdant hues in overgrown scenes of vegetation throughout this appreciative work on the abundant value of "green." Ages 5--8. (Mar.)
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Review by Horn Book Review
Davies showcases the important role that plants play on Earth as consumers of carbon, producers of oxygen, and mitigators of the effects of human-induced global warming. The meaning of "green" is creatively expanded from the color we associate with plants to encompass the process of photosynthesis and the components of plant cells in which it takes place. "Their green isn't just a color...this green catches the energy in sunlight." Sutton's lush illustrations, naturally featuring many shades of green, fill the pages with tendrils, roots, and leaves at macro and micro scales and portray ecosystems on land and water throughout Earth's history as teeming with plants and animals. As Davies explains the history of plant life and its transformation into today's fossil fuels, the story shifts into how human exploitation of ancient life has meant the release of too much carbon dioxide into our atmosphere. Luckily, today's green plants in the sea and across various environments fight back against climate change. We must "remember that GREEN is the most important color in the world." Danielle J. FordJanuary/February 2024 p.109 (c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A basic introduction to the role plants play in supplying oxygen and trapping excess carbon dioxide. Davies has a simple message to deliver. To get there, she first takes a close look at leaf structure and photosynthesis, then goes back four billion years to retrace the development of life from the first green microorganisms to the Carboniferous Period and the formation of fossil fuels. Today, she writes, our planet is covered with "great green nations" of plants that work with fauna and fungi to lock back up the carbon we've thoughtlessly released over the past few centuries, which is heating the planet and "messing up the weather." But those natural communities, threatened by habitat destruction and plastic pollution, need our assistance. Readers will have to look elsewhere for hints about concrete ways to help, but our urgent need to act comes through loud and clear. Over a running timeline, Sutton fashions land- and seascapes teeming with plants and animals (or, in one urban vista, cars and smoke-belching factories) on the way to final views of racially diverse children climbing a tree, including a light-skinned youngster who stays behind to reflect on the author's conclusion: "GREEN is the most important color in the world." A cogent reminder of the significance of plants, for oxygen breathers of all species. (Informational picture book. 6-8) Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
