Review Detail

Sona Sharma: Looking After Planet Earth was an insightful early chapter book. Sona learns in school about global warming and takes her teacher's call to action seriously to start small, start now, and include her family in making changes. Sona’s initial approaches to trying to help the Earth leave all her family upset with her. I thought what she did was a realistic interpretation of how a child might see the issue in absolutes and make mistakes plus it provided some comedic levity to the book.
I love that the family had a discussion and were supportive of her efforts and helped her apply what she has learned in more appropriate and beneficial ways. This book has surprisingly realistic reactions by the characters. Not all the adults were happy with the changes and not everyone was rosy and understanding when Sona made mistakes. That felt like life where some adults are better around children than others and some are harsh.
Being a chapter book, this story did a good job of having multiple conflicts and resolutions. The big conflict is Sona wanting to get chemicals banned from the cultural festival of making Kolams. This book did not take the easy way out and just fling a new rule and have everyone be ok and happily ever after. Instead, Sona was told to look through the rule book and find an existing rule that could support the ban. Through this, readers learned several large vocabulary words along with Sona and how to study a problem and think creatively for a solution. This was a refreshingly complex and realistic way to resolve the problem for an early chapter book.
Overall, I like that the book does not pander to children and seeks deep and thoughtful solutions that model practical ways to help the Earth and inspire change within the community. Sona was a positive example of how children can make a difference. I also liked that the story effortlessly incorporates Indian culture for positive representation. This would make a nice early chapter book for first through third graders that can supplement learning about the Earth, problem-solving, and multicultural representation.