Green: The Story of Plant Life on Our Planet

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.)