1st August National Tree Day

Each year, around 200 000 Australian school students participate in a special National Tree Day event designed just for children – Schools Tree Day! It's a wonderful opportunity for children to make a tree-mendous contribution to Australia's natural environment and have lots of fun at the same time.

As well as planting trees, this is a good time to look at trees and their role in the greening of our world. Wangari's Trees of Peace by Jeanette Winter and Planting the Trees of Kenya by Claire A. Nivola are two picture books that look at Wangari Maathai, the winner of the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize and her quest to plant trees in Kenya.

"One Spring day, little seed wanted more. She didn't know why, but she did." So begins Gav Barbey's Little Seed, a book that celebrates the beauty and importance of trees as the seed travels around the world, visiting the Joshua tree, the cedar of Lebanon, the boabab in Africa until arriving at the flowering wattle.

And lastly, We Planted a Tree by Diane Muldrow and Bob Staake, a poem about two families on opposite sides of the world who plant a tree and watch it grow.