100 books like No World Too Big

By Lindsay H. Metcalf, Keila V. Dawson, Jeanette Bradley

Here are 100 books that No World Too Big fans have personally recommended if you like No World Too Big. Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of Becoming a Good Creature

Hayley Rocco Author Of Hello, I'm a Sloth

From my list on picture books about animals for young readers.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve been in love with animals my whole life. I loved them so much in fact, that I wished to become one, whether it was a sea otter, wild horse, or a dolphin. Today, I’m fortunate enough to not only write about animals, but I also advocate for their protection as an ambassador for Wild Tomorrow and Defenders of Wildlife. As co-founder of the Children’s Book Creators for Conservation, I help other children’s book writers and illustrators connect with conservation stories in the field. I hope you’re as inspired by these books as I am!

Hayley's book list on picture books about animals for young readers

Hayley Rocco Why did Hayley love this book?

This picture book memoir based on her New York Times best-selling adult memoir, How to Be a Good Creature: A Memoir in Thirteen Animals, introduces young readers to some of the incredible animals that have influenced the author throughout her lifetime and challenges us all to look at our relationships with animals differently.

What lessons have animals taught us—whether it’s our domesticated pets at home or animals you’ve seen in nature? How can animals make us better versions of ourselves? This beautifully told story by one of the greatest nature writers of our time shows us simply just how much animals have to teach us if we only pay close attention.

By Sy Montgomery, Rebecca Green (illustrator),

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Becoming a Good Creature as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it. This book is for kids age 4, 5, 6, and 7.

What is this book about?

Sy Montgomery has had many teachers in her life: some with two legs, others with four, or even eight! Some have had fur, feathers, or hooves. But they've all had one thing in common: a lesson to share.

The animals Sy has met on her many world travels have taught her how to seek understanding in the most surprising ways, from being patient to finding forgiveness and respecting others. Gorillas, dogs, octopuses, tigers, and more all have shown Sy that there are no limits to the empathy and joy we can find in each other if only we take the…


Book cover of Polar Bear, Why Is Your World Melting?

Julie Dunlap Author Of I Begin with Spring: The Life and Seasons of Henry David Thoreau

From my list on children's books about the climate crisis that won’t scare their socks off.

Why am I passionate about this?

As a biology professor, I communicate frankly with adults about climate change, trusting them to comprehend the accelerating crisis. As a mom of Millennials, I channeled worries about their coping with wildfires, droughts, and extinctions into editing an anthology of young adults’ climate essays. Grandchildren posed a new worry: how should climate realities be introduced to the newest generation? My attempt at that task is a biography of Thoreau, focusing on his 1850s nature observations that ecologists now use to assess 21st-century climate shifts. Luckily, other children’s book writers also offer stories, memoirs, and other approaches to inform without alarming young readers; the best inspire determination to craft a better future.

Julie's book list on children's books about the climate crisis that won’t scare their socks off

Julie Dunlap Why did Julie love this book?

Facts matter to kids, of course, and library shelves groan with attempts to distill climate causes and effects down to child-sized volumes. For middle graders, visual encyclopedia-style nonfiction can work well, covering broad ranges of information from atmospheric chemistry to statistics on carbon emissions sources in photo-rich chunks. 

But I’ve seen younger readers wince at graphic pictures of bleached coral or violent wildfires. Pen and acrylic drawings soften this book’s approach, supporting student learning by avoiding traumatic imagery. The polar bear theme draws readers in yet gradually widens to encompass people and places affected near home.

My special kudos for spreads that explain scientific concepts, like the greenhouse effect, with accurate prose and illustrations abounding with life. 

By Robert E. Wells,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Polar Bear, Why Is Your World Melting? as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In the Arctic, the summer ice is melting, making it hard for polar bears and their cubs to survive. Why is the world getting warmer? The heat of the sun is trapped by the "greenhouse" gases that surround Earth―carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and water vapor. If there is just the right amount of these trapped gases, the air is warm enough for plants, animals, and people to thrive. But now there is too much greenhouse gas, especially carbon dioxide. Polar bears, and all of us, are in trouble. Robert E. Wells shows why so much carbon dioxide is going…


Book cover of The Tantrum That Saved the World

Julie Dunlap Author Of I Begin with Spring: The Life and Seasons of Henry David Thoreau

From my list on children's books about the climate crisis that won’t scare their socks off.

Why am I passionate about this?

As a biology professor, I communicate frankly with adults about climate change, trusting them to comprehend the accelerating crisis. As a mom of Millennials, I channeled worries about their coping with wildfires, droughts, and extinctions into editing an anthology of young adults’ climate essays. Grandchildren posed a new worry: how should climate realities be introduced to the newest generation? My attempt at that task is a biography of Thoreau, focusing on his 1850s nature observations that ecologists now use to assess 21st-century climate shifts. Luckily, other children’s book writers also offer stories, memoirs, and other approaches to inform without alarming young readers; the best inspire determination to craft a better future.

Julie's book list on children's books about the climate crisis that won’t scare their socks off

Julie Dunlap Why did Julie love this book?

What happens when a cartoonist-television writer and a distinguished earth science professor team up to write about climate change? To me, the result is pure synergy.

Rollicking watercolors and humor-leavened text make hard climate truths accessible and empowering. Yes, the once-climate-unaware protagonist suffers at first as she learns about drought, species endangerment, and other perils accelerating our way.

But knowledge truly is power for the determined heroine, who personifies the kind of persistence and resilience we will all need in the coming decades. She doesn’t claim to have all the answers but insists that together we can find them.

Book cover of Stand Up! Speak Up!: A Story Inspired by the Climate Change Revolution

Julie Dunlap Author Of I Begin with Spring: The Life and Seasons of Henry David Thoreau

From my list on children's books about the climate crisis that won’t scare their socks off.

Why am I passionate about this?

As a biology professor, I communicate frankly with adults about climate change, trusting them to comprehend the accelerating crisis. As a mom of Millennials, I channeled worries about their coping with wildfires, droughts, and extinctions into editing an anthology of young adults’ climate essays. Grandchildren posed a new worry: how should climate realities be introduced to the newest generation? My attempt at that task is a biography of Thoreau, focusing on his 1850s nature observations that ecologists now use to assess 21st-century climate shifts. Luckily, other children’s book writers also offer stories, memoirs, and other approaches to inform without alarming young readers; the best inspire determination to craft a better future.

Julie's book list on children's books about the climate crisis that won’t scare their socks off

Julie Dunlap Why did Julie love this book?

This is the kind of book that changes lives! The spare text and black-and-white sketches convey an inescapable message about climate action: the hope we need comes from us.

As personified by another young heroine, effective action will take resolve (“Rise up!”), imagination ("Think up”), sleepless nights (“Rest up”), and support when we can find it (“Meet up.”) Some solutions may be unexpected, like seed swaps and Little Free Libraries, but they’re not impossible. Plenty of them look like fun.

I don’t know another book that depicts more succinctly how to build the future we want and children deserve: “Show up!”

By Andrew Joyner,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Stand Up! Speak Up! as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it. This book is for kids age 4, 5, 6, and 7.

What is this book about?

Awarded as a 2021 Malka Penn Award Honor Book, here is a timely picture book about a young girl's mission to inspire others to help the planet. The meaningful message of climate change activism is perfect for Earth Day and every day!

Celebrate young climate change activists in this charming story about an empowered girl who shows up, listens up, and ultimately, speaks up to inspire her community to take action against climate change. After attending a climate march, a young activist is motivated to make an effort and do her part to help the planet... by organizing volunteers to…


Book cover of Our Biggest Experiment: An Epic History of the Climate Crisis

Tim Smedley Author Of Clearing The Air: The Beginning and the End Of Air Pollution

From my list on the climate crisis.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m an environmental journalist (BBC, The Guardian, The Sunday Times) and book author, based in the UK. My interest lies in the intersection between human health, the environment, and climate crisis: the actions we can take that not only reduce climate change for future generations but also improve biodiversity, health, and wellbeing right now. That led to me write my first book, Clearing The Air, about air pollution. And I’m now writing my second book, The Last Drop, looking at how climate change is affecting the world’s water cycle and our access to freshwater. My best books list below maybe misses out on some obvious choices (Naomi Klein, Rachel Carson, etc) in favour of more recent books and authors deserving of a wider audience. 

Tim's book list on the climate crisis

Tim Smedley Why did Tim love this book?

Alice Bell offers a full history of climate science, from Eunice Newton Foote’s early CO2 experiments in the 1850s, to Thomas Edison, Big Oil, the formation of the IPCC, and beyond. Given such a pressing crisis, we can often get caught up with the here and now – Bell’s book allows us to take a step back and remind ourselves how we got here, and learn the lessons from history. 

By Alice Bell,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Our Biggest Experiment as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Did you know the link between carbon dioxide and global warming was first suggested in the 1850s? Climate change books are usually about the future, but Our Biggest Experiment turns instead asks how did we get into this mess, and how and when did we work out it was happening? Join Alice Bell on a rip-roaring ride through the characters, ideas, technologies and experiments that shaped the climate crisis we now find ourselves in. From an emerging idea of 'greenhouse gases' in the 19th century and, via scientific expeditions across oceans and ice caps and into space, the coining of…


Book cover of Requiem for a Species: Why We Resist the Truth About Climate Change

Chris Rapley Author Of 2071: The World We'll Leave Our Grandchildren

From my list on the climate crisis and the need for action.

Why am I passionate about this?

I'm a Professor of Climate Science at University College London. My early career was spent as a ‘rocket scientist’ designing, building, and operating instruments to fly on sounding rockets and satellites to study the cosmos and the Sun. I established the UCL satellite Remote Sensing Group, with special attention to the polar regions. I then ran an international Global Change research programme that coordinated Earth science activities in 75 countries. Since then I've run the British Antarctic Survey, responsible for the UK’s research access to Antarctica, and the Science Museum in London. The museum’s collection traces the evolution of the industrial revolution, which started in the UK, and of which climate change is the unintended consequence.

Chris' book list on the climate crisis and the need for action

Chris Rapley Why did Chris love this book?

I met Clive Hamilton at an event in London in 2011 shortly after the book’s launch. At the time the climate science community was still reeling from the disaster of the 2009 Copenhagen climate change summit.

As rationalists, we were asking the question: “Why is the scientific evidence not being listened to?” Hamilton provided answers – about humanity’s free market consumerist fetish, the insidious role of mainstream economics, and our denialist tendencies, alienation from nature, and hubris.

He explained that “Awakening to the prospect of climate disruption compels us to abandon most of the comfortable beliefs that have sustained our sense of the world as a stable and civilising place.

Dismissing techno-solutions such as Carbon Capture and Storage and ‘Clean Coal’ as diversionary tactics by powerful interests, the book offers an ethical and moral basis for reconstructing the future. Rereading it 13 years after its publication, I am…

By Clive Hamilton,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Requiem for a Species as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This book does not set out once more to raise the alarm to encourage us to take radical measures to head off climate chaos. There have been any number of books and reports in recent years explaining just how dire the future looks and how little time we have left to act.

This book is about why we have ignored those warnings, and why it is now too late. It is a book about the frailties of the human species as expressed in both the institutions we built and the psychological dispositions that have led us on the path of…


Book cover of Regeneration: Ending the Climate Crisis in One Generation

Kristin Ohlson Author Of Sweet in Tooth and Claw: Stories of Generosity and Cooperation in the Natural World

From my list on interconnection in nature.

Why am I passionate about this?

I grew up in a small agricultural town in California’s Sacramento Valley, and my parents didn’t even consider worrying if I was bored or lonely when I wasn’t at school. Consequently, I spent hours in a nearby vacant lot riddled with anthills watching the ants hustle back and forth and, occasionally, inserting myself in their lives with handfuls of sugar or sticks to block their paths. Pretty sure this is where my interest in science and nature began—and maybe even my interest in cooperation.

Kristin's book list on interconnection in nature

Kristin Ohlson Why did Kristin love this book?

I worry that people don’t hear enough about solutions to the climate crisis, but, thankfully, Paul Hawken and his collaborators lay many of them out in this book.

They focus not on the flashy technologies that often grab headlines—and not just on the reduction of fossil fuels—but on the power of a healthy, living Earth to heal itself. Of course, we need to be partners in this healing, and Hawken illuminates the people, organizations, and approaches that are doing just that.

By Paul Hawken,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked Regeneration as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A radically new understanding of and practical approach to climate change by noted environmentalist Paul Hawken, creator of the New York Times bestseller Drawdown

Regeneration offers a visionary new approach to climate change, one that weaves justice, climate, biodiversity, equity, and human dignity into a seamless tapestry of action, policy, and transformation that can end the climate crisis in one generation. It is the first book to describe and define the burgeoning regeneration movement spreading rapidly throughout the world.

Regeneration describes how an inclusive movement can engage the majority of humanity to save the world from the threat of global…


Book cover of Forecast: A Diary of the Lost Seasons

Tim Smedley Author Of Clearing The Air: The Beginning and the End Of Air Pollution

From my list on the climate crisis.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m an environmental journalist (BBC, The Guardian, The Sunday Times) and book author, based in the UK. My interest lies in the intersection between human health, the environment, and climate crisis: the actions we can take that not only reduce climate change for future generations but also improve biodiversity, health, and wellbeing right now. That led to me write my first book, Clearing The Air, about air pollution. And I’m now writing my second book, The Last Drop, looking at how climate change is affecting the world’s water cycle and our access to freshwater. My best books list below maybe misses out on some obvious choices (Naomi Klein, Rachel Carson, etc) in favour of more recent books and authors deserving of a wider audience. 

Tim's book list on the climate crisis

Tim Smedley Why did Tim love this book?

Joe Shute’s book brings us right up to date, opening with the Covid-19 lockdown in 2020, and that strange, momentary blip of nature remerging as humans retreated to their homes. Shute looks at the climate crisis through the window in more ways than one – how seasons and weather patterns are changing, and how that shifts our cultural and ancestral connections with nature. It’s a poetic read told by a true nature lover. 

By Joe Shute,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Forecast as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

We all talk about them. We all plan our lives by them. We are all obsessed with the outlook ahead. The changing seasons have shaped all of our lives, but what happens when the weather changes beyond recognition?

The author, Joe Shute, has spent years unpicking Britain's long-standing love affair with the weather. He has pored over the literature, art and music our weather systems have inspired and trawled through centuries of established folklore to discover the curious customs and rituals we have created in response to the seasons. But in recent years Shute has discovered a curious thing: the…


Book cover of The Climate Book: The Facts and the Solutions

Hans Ohanian Author Of Einstein's Mistakes: The Human Failings of Genius

From my list on the climate-change disaster and how to avoid it.

Why am I passionate about this?

Hans Ohanian is a physicist who has taught at several universities before retiring to engage in full-time research, writing, and acting as reviewer for several scientific journals. In one of his first books he included two chapters on “Energy, entropy, and environment” and “Nuclear energy.” This gave him valuable expertise for reviewing the five great books he recommends here.

Hans' book list on the climate-change disaster and how to avoid it

Hans Ohanian Why did Hans love this book?

When Greta Thunberg first appeared in public as a schoolgirl-on-strike, I admired her talent as a performer of political theater. By now, as a young woman, she has become a phenomenon, and I admire her talents as a writer.

In her new book, she deftly intersperses essays of her own with those of a hundred other environmentalists. She raises the alarm over the cataclysmic shipwreck that is heading our way and also over the incompetence, mendacity, and lethargy of our political leaders.

I fully agree with Greta’s alarm, and I found some of the possible environmental disasters outlined in her book totally scary, especially those described in the charts of tipping points in oceanic currents, polar ice sheets, the Amazon rainforest, and the monsoon rains.

By Greta Thunberg,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Climate Book as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

We still have time to change the world. From climate activist Greta Thunberg, comes the essential handbook for making it happen.

You might think it's an impossible task: secure a safe future for life on Earth, at a scale and speed never seen, against all the odds. There is hope—but only if we listen to the science before it's too late.

In The Climate Book, Greta Thunberg has gathered the wisdom of over one hundred experts—geophysicists, oceanographers and meteorologists; engineers, economists and mathematicians; historians, philosophers and Indigenous leaders—to equip us all with the knowledge we…


Book cover of No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference

Julian Caldecott Author Of Water: Life in Every Drop

From my list on building peace with nature.

Why am I passionate about this?

I started off studying tropical rainforest creatures and saw the catastrophic impacts of modern humanity on nature and indigenous peoples. My work then focused on how to resolve conflicts between people and nature, at first in and around national parks and then more widely. I became quite good at dissecting environmental aid portfolios, and writing up what I had found in a series of books. I was also drawn into the great climate protests of 2019 and 2020, and now I'm working on pulling it all together into a book on Restoring Peace with Nature.

Julian's book list on building peace with nature

Julian Caldecott Why did Julian love this book?

I was in Parliament Square at Samhain, 31 Oct 2018, when the Extinction Rebellion began. Greta Thunberg spoke there, but the mic broke so she paused at every sentence for the front rank to call out her words to those behind. The potent archetype of a virgin girl-child speaking truth to power worked its traditional magic, by exalting a thousand people, including me. Fast-forward a few years, and millions on the streets, and this little book condenses the motivation and message of climate activism: “Everyone and everything needs to change. Make the best available science the heart of politics and democracy. We must start today. We have no more excuses.” Greta offers everything important that we have been trying to say for decades. She encourages us to unify our divided minds and purposes. To me this is worthy of the most passionate engagement.

By Greta Thunberg,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The #1 New York Times bestseller by Time's 2019 Person of the Year

"Greta Thunberg is already one of our planet's greatest advocates." -Barack Obama

The groundbreaking speeches of Greta Thunberg, the young climate activist who has become the voice of a generation, including her historic address to the United Nations

In August 2018 a fifteen-year-old Swedish girl, Greta Thunberg, decided not to go to school one day in order to protest the climate crisis. Her actions sparked a global movement, inspiring millions of students to go on strike for our planet, forcing governments to listen, and earning her a…


Book cover of Becoming a Good Creature
Book cover of Polar Bear, Why Is Your World Melting?
Book cover of The Tantrum That Saved the World

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Interested in climate change, climate fiction, and Indonesia?

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