My Mom Hugs Trees
I recommended Think Green for preschool teachers and parents to appropriately celebrate and teach children about Earth Day this April but another favorite that we read often is My Mom Hugs Trees. I m pretty sure my son won t tell his friends that I hug trees but I love the title and the front cover is so cute. It makes my children and I laugh with it s silly pictures of a mom hugging a tree and spiders crawling on her back and the ants going up her pants. We all giggle! This book really emphasizes compassion and love for all things natural, organic and earthy. The mom talks to plants, sing with the birds, respect the animals crossing the road, says hello to the sun and goodnight to the moon. The daughter at first seems embarrassed by her moms silly ways but in the end the daughter asks her mom why she does all these crazy things and when the mom explains her love for nature and Mother Earth it has an impact on the little girl. I love the intertwined themes of nature, love; relationships and uniqueness. The book always leaves me smiling and knowing I have read a book to my children that s warm and thoughtful while teaching them some great lessons. It is so nice to enjoy this book at bedtime and I hope the children drift to sleep thinking about signing with birds and maybe their mommy hugging trees. --greenandcleanmom.orgI have to admit, I am a mom who hugs trees. There's even a black and white self-portrait of me hugging a cedar tree in my mother's house. Since before my children were born, I have hiked to a sacred yew tree on my land, hugged it, and said my prayers several times a week. Sometimes my children join in, sometimes they just explore the yew grove. Last winter, my hugging yew tree fell over after a great snow fall. I still hug it, and it is still alive, but I must lean over to hug my tree now. My daughter can definitely relate to My Mom Hugs Trees, written by Robyn Ringgold and illustrated by Vidya Vasudevan. This rhyming book is the story of a mother that not only hugs trees, but she talks to plants, rescues bugs instead of killing them, plants seeds from the fruit they eat, asks the flowers if she can pick them, etc. OK, she's a hippie!  After bedtime stories, Mom says good night to the moon and stars. "Good night, Moon. Good night, Stars. Thank you for your light from afar. The only difference between the mom in this book and myself, is I do kill ticks, but my daughter hears me tell the dead ticks, "I hope you have an auspicious rebirth," as I dispose of them. My Mom Hugs Trees is published by Solar Publishing. --goodfriendsgoodbooks.comNature-loving mom pens book to get kids thinking eco-friendly I've tried to instill an appreciation of the natural world in my son, Evan, from a very young age. All work stops in our house for a good sunset; we take insects that wander into the house back outside whenever possible; he and his dad built a bird feeder for the neighborhood Chickadees this past winter; and he and I are busy planning what to include in our backyard butterfly garden this year. So, when Robyn Ringgold's book, "My Mom Hugs Trees" arrived at Reminder Publications just in time for Earth Day, I figured it was a book Evan and I could relate to. Press material that accompanied this whimsical story of a mom who hugs trees, talks to plants, thanks the sun and moon for their light, and (like me) takes bugs outside in paper cups, says the story was inspired by a conversation Ringgold heard between one of her daughters and a friend. Ringgold, it seems, is much like the mom in her story. Her daughter is like the book's slightly confused young girl who doesn't quite know what to make of her mom's actions. As we started reading, Evan shrewdly pointed out that I wasn't exactly like the mom in the book because I won't let bugs crawl on me; I'm more like the little girl, who's afraid when a bug crawls on her (a very true observation!). And though some of the things the mom does such as singing with the birds and asking flowers if it's OK to cut them seemed a bit "weird" to my seven-year-old boy, he liked reading the rhyming text and found the expressions the illustrator gave the little girl "pretty funny." When I asked him what he thought of the book, he said without hesitation, "I like it." That's high praise from my skeptical reader, who turns down most of the books I suggest at the library! --NatureLovingMomBook