About three in five young adults worldwide report they are “worried” about climate change, but 55% of teachers don’t address the topic because they feel unprepared to do so. And when it comes to books that present climate information to preschool- and elementary-age kids, many titles end up exacerbating readers’ fears or engaging in greenwashing.
Our mid-size Midwestern public library thought: Why not develop an award to honor excellent titles that buck this trend?
In 2022, Evanston (Ill.) Public Library (EPL) announced the inaugural recipients of its Blueberry Awards. These awards, the first of their kind in the library world, recognize and elevate fiction and nonfiction books that teach children ages 3–10 about nature and climate—while taking care to not add to their anxiety.
Evanston is a climate-conscious city with an adopted resilience plan. But it was the early days of the pandemic—when we saw animals return to urban areas and birdwatching grow in popularity—that inspired us to start the awards. (Blueberry rhymes with “Newbery,” and “blue” to represent the planet.) This March, we will announce our fourth-annual list of winners.
To design the awards, EPL collaborated with biologists, city and school sustainability managers, personnel from nearby nature centers, and Indigenous activists. We laid out this criteria: Winning titles must display excellence in writing, art, and design; reflect the diversity of both people and the natural world; be scientifically accurate; and discuss climate peril in age-appropriate and truthful ways. Importantly, these books need to show that saving the planet isn’t solely up to kids. Adults are already working on solutions—and collective action means no one has to act alone.
From there, a committee of EPL staffers and community experts selects 35 children’s titles from hundreds about nature and climate published in the US that year. We choose one winner and 24 honor titles, along with 10 changemaker titles that clearly demonstrate actions children can take. The committee meets four times a year, with most collaboration taking place in a Google Doc. Our evaluators bring different expertise to the discussions; for instance, the biologist can spot the tiniest errors in ecosystem descriptions, while the school librarian brings a classroom perspective.
Books need to show that saving the planet isn’t solely up to kids.
The first Blueberry winner was How to Find a Fox (2021) by Kate Gardner, selected for its gorgeous photography by Ossi Saarinen, simple language, and specific instructions for how to encounter foxes in the wild.
Because our awards don’t offer a monetary prize, we worried they might not be taken seriously. But we’re finding authors and illustrators love them. Newbery Medal–winning author Katherine Applegate, who received a Blueberry honor for her middle-grade novel Odder (2022) about a fearless sea otter, told us these awards give kids hope.
Four years in, we’re seeing the awards’ reach. Publishers have started to send us submissions and include the award logo on the covers of reprinted titles. We have begun marketing titles to environmental educators at parks and nature centers. This awards cycle, we launched Blueberry Votes, a program for kindergartners and 1st-graders to select one title to include on our 2025 list.
Our goal is that the awards help libraries and schools with their sustainability efforts. Children’s librarians can turn to our book lists for readers’ advisory, storytime selections, and displays. They can promote titles for Earth Day (and beyond), reach out to winning authors for visits, plan book-based STEM programming, and use spine labels to highlight Blueberry titles.
Amid ecological crises, we have an opportunity to help children grow as climate citizens. Modeling sustainability by planting gardens and putting up solar panels is fantastic, but when we leverage our core strength—the evaluation and selection of books and information—we can have an even greater impact.
For a list of this year’s Blueberry Awards winners, visit epl.org/blueberry after March 21.
