Arthur Books, Going Green with Author Marc Brown

Arthur, the friendly aardvark, returns after 10 years to teach children how to save the environment in Marc Brown’s newest book, Arthur Turns Green

A few weeks ago I was able to take my kids to see Marc Brown speak at our local public library. He took questions from the kids, then told of his inspirations for his characters and story ideas.

Since we often read Arthur books to our kids and they watch the TV shows on PBS several times a week, I was surprised to find out this is the first book he has written in 10 years, in honor of the 35th anniversary of Arthur. He is doing a small tour to promote the book and seemed sincerely focused on encouraging kids to learn how to save the environment.

Here are 6 Ways to GO GREEN I discussed with our kids after listening to him read this book:

1. Share our books with others and when we are done with them, donate them to a charity like READING TREE who distributes them or recycles damaged books.
2. Turn the water off while brushing your teeth.
3. Turn lights off when you aren’t in a room.
4. Put paper and special plastics in our recycle bin.
5. Turn off toys when finished playing to not waste batteries (reducing landfill waste).
6. Put toys and clothes (they’ve outgrown) into the Yard Sale Box.  We have a yard sale every other year and promote it as a ‘Recycle Sale’.  Here is a sign I created to ‘brand’ our yard sale. I put it in the classifieds and print it on card stock then attach it to a florescent green poster board with more time/date/location details to hang around our neighborhood. We’ve had a lot of success with people saying it got their attention.

Free Printable for Yard Sale, Recycle Sale

The kids and I also thought it was fascinating to find out Marc Brown lived on Martha's Vineyard where he has to take a ferry to get home.  He spoke about his barn/old school house that was turned into a studio where he writes and illustrates the Arthur stories. More about where he lives and creates his books.
 Video of Marc Brown reading his new book, Arthur Turns Green can be found on Lesson Plan SOS, an amazing blog.
Our local library has a great puppet named Earl E. Literacy. See Earl’s interview with Marc Brown here.
My kids had him sign several books they brought from home. The local book shop sponsoring the event ran out of the new book before the event so we’ve still got to find a way to get a copy of Arthur Turns Green