Buried Sunlight: How Fossil Fuels Have Changed The Earth

Buried Sunlight: How Fossil Fuels Have Changed The Earth

Written by Molly Bang & Penny Chisholm

Illustrated by Molly Bang

Grade Level: 2-5

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    When I was looking through my school’s science textbook I was shocked by its omission of any discussion about climate change. There’s a lesson about how humans can change the environment, a lesson about how energy conservation can help the environment, but no lesson linking the two. Omitting a discussion about global warming makes both lessons far less effective. It refuses necessary connections that our students need to make as citizens of an increasingly warming planet. It's also an act of extreme cowardice, cowing to the worst voices in politics, hungry to make a culture war out of even a children's science textbook. Thankfully, Ms. Moreira, who will be my mentor teacher next semester, had a book well suited for 3rd graders in her classroom that addresses the mechanisms of climate change directly.

    Cowritten by MIT ecology professor and National Science Medal winner Dr. Chisolm and children book author Molly Bang, Buried Sunlight forms a part of Bang's Sunlight Series. Bang illustrates Buried Sunlight in luminous watercolors, giving even complicated science diagrams a childlike sense of wonder. I especially love how carbon dioxide is rendered like a twinkling firefly. Told from the perspective of our sun, Buried Sunlight gives a detailed, nearly comprehensive look at climate change. It explains how coal and oil are "buried sunlight." Burning those resources releases carbon dioxide into the air, which forms greenhouse gasses that will heat our planet and scar the environment. The end of the book is filled with you statements, to accentuate that even young children can reduce their carbon footprint. "Will you use my ancient sunlight more slowly, find other sources of energy, and invent ways to thin the blanket of CO₂ ? The choice is yours." This book would be a perfect book to read to 3rd graders to introduce climate change to them.

   Buried Sunlight fits the Awareness Raising element of Social Justice Teaching well. Awareness Raising seeks to make our students aware of social justice issues that they face that they might not even know about. This book works to explain an extremely complicated, yet important social justice issue with clarity. In this country, we easily shunt aside "Inconvenient Truths" about how we live, even out of our science textbooks. Climate change is also an environmental and racial justice issue. As I saw in an environmental justice tour of Newark's Ironbound District, our environments are not race blind. Climate change is affecting and will continue to affect POC communities at much greater rates than white communities. Much of Newark is built on former wetlands and riverbanks. These areas are prone to flooding, especially as climate change accelerates. Climate change is intrinsically linked to social and racial justice. Although Buried Sunlight is comprehensive, one weakness is that it does not talk about these environmental justice issues. However, I think Buried Sunlight is still a great tool for Awareness Raising about the mechanisms of climate change. After being read this book, I think students will have a much greater awareness of how climate change works, and the actions in their own lives that contribute to global warming.

    I would use this book in my 3rd grader's science class, in between our textbook's lessons about environmental change and energy conservation. I would create an activity where I read them this book, and then have them write answers to some of the discussion questions written by the publisher. In future lessons, I would try to incorporate an environmental justice lens to climate change; that rich communities are the leading contributors too climate change and poor communities will be harmed the most it. I would also make sure future lessons touch on advances in green energy technology and legislation. It's one thing to raise awareness about climate change, but I think even many adults aren't aware of ways that they can take action against such a massive problem. Buried Sunlight is a great tool to raise awareness of one of the key problems of the 21st century, one America is only just now beginning to meaningfully address.