Discover the true story of how a 1969 fire in one of the most polluted rivers in America sparked the national Earth Day movement in this nonfiction picture book by award-winning author Barry Wittenstein and beloved illustrator Jessie Hartland.After the Industrial Revolution in the 1880s, the Cayuhoga River in Cleveland, Ohio, caught fire almost twenty times, earning Cleveland the nickname The Mistake on the Lake. Waste dumping had made fires so routine that local politicians and media didnt pay them any mind, and other Cleveland residents laughed off their combustible river and even wrote songs about it. But when the river ignited again in June 1969, the national media picked up on the story and added fuel to the fire of the recent environmental movement. A year later, in 1970, President Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agencyleading to the Clean Water and Clean Air Actsand the first Earth Day was celebrated. It was a celebration, it was a protest, and it was the beginning of a movement to save our planet.

 

 

This book is aimed at children in preschool-3rd grade.

This book has been graded for interest at 4-8 years.

There are 48 pages in this book. This book was published in 2023 by Simon & Schuster .

Jessie Hartland has painted murals at a Japanese amusement park, designed Christmas windows for Bloomingdale's, and put her mark on ceramics, watches, and all sorts of other things. She is the author and illustrator many nonfiction titles for young readers, including How the Dinosaur Got to the Museum and Bon Appetit! The Delicious Life of Julia Child. Her collaboration with author Diane Stanley, Ada Lovelace, Poet of Science , was designated an ALA Notable Book, among many other accolades, and her illustrations were praised as "full of wit" by Booklist in a starred review. Jessie lives in New York City.