Today we pay tribute to Nobel Peace Prize winner Professor Wangari Maathai, scientist, activist and environmentalist, who died yesterday.

Wangari Maathai founded the Green Belt Movement in 1977 following her return to her native Kenya, after pursuing university studies in the US: she was concerned not only about the detrimental changes in the landscape caused by deforestation, but also about how these were affecting women’s lives especially. Through the Green Belt Movement, more than 47 million trees have been planted, and with them, many families have been able to take active control of their own food production and become involved in promoting sustainable development.

Three inspirational children’s books that relate this aspect of Wangari Maathai’s life are Planting the Trees of Kenya: The Story of Wangari Maathai by Claire A. Nivola (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008) and Wangari’s Trees of Peace: A True Story from Africa by Jeanette Winter (Harcourt Books, 2008) and Seeds of Change: Wangari’s Gift to the World by Jen Cullerton Johnson, illustrated by Sonia Lynn Sadler (Lee & Low Books, 2010). Wangari’s story helps children to recognise that small actions can lead to big actions, and that through putting many people’s small actions together, they can be the instrument for momentous change.

You can read more about Wangari Maathai’s incredible life on the Green Belt Movement’s website, including her advocacy for freedom and peace; and her own words about some of the issues close to her heart. Our thoughts and prayers are with Wangari’s family: may the knowledge that Wangari’s name and influence will live on be of consolation to them in their time of grief. An online condolence book is available on Wangari’s Facebook page.

Jeanette Winter’s Wangari’s Trees of Peace: A True Story from Africa (Harcourt Books, 2008), is featured as a new review in our current issue of PaperTigers and I very much look forward to seeing this version of Wangari Maathai’s story as I love both Jeanette Winter’s illustrations and her turn of phrase.

We have recently read instead, as part of our PaperTigers Reading the World Challenge, another version of the same true story, which also came out last year – Planting the Trees of Kenya: The Story of Wangari Maathai, written and illustrated by Claire A. Nivola (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008). It was recommended to me by the wonderful Willesden Bookshop in London, and I’ll be blogging about my visit there soon! Like Wangari’s Trees of Peace, Planting the Trees of Kenya tells the story of Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai’s campaign to save the landscape of Kenya and, through the foundation of her Green Belt Movement, to enable people to help themselves.

It begins, just as a book aimed at a young audience should, with her childhood and progresses through her time as a student in the US, to the changes she discovered in the landscape of Kenya when she returned. My two were so engrossed that Little Brother immediately took in the disastrous implications of Wangari standing in the midst of agricultural workers, gazing at the stump, which was all that remained of her beloved, sacred fig tree. However, Wangari did not just sit down and lament. She began by (more…)

If you haven’t already found your way to the Cybils shortlists, then head on over there and check them out.

The panelists had a huge number of books to read this year – word is definitely getting round! – and now the judges have some tough choices to make.

I’m delighted to see that Wabi Sabi by Mark Reibstein and Ed Young made it through to the finals – now we’ll just have to wait and see!

Meanwhile, there are lots of books there that we haven’t read yet, and several are going straight on to our books-waiting-to-be-read lists – such as Wangari’s Trees of Peace: A True Story from Africa by Jeanette Winter (non-fiction picture-books); and Alvin Ho by Lenore Look and The London Eye Mystery by Siobhan Dowd (both in the Middle Grade Fiction category).

Happy reading, everyone – especially if you’re a Cybils judge!