Growing Sustainable Together

Practical Resources for Raising Kind, Engaged, Resilient Children

By: Shannon Brescher Shea

Narrated by: Raechel Wong

Tips, tools, advice, and activities for raising eco-friendly kids while nurturing compassion, resilience, and community engagement.

Drawing from cutting-edge social-science research, parent interviews, and experiential wisdom, science writer and parenting blogger Shannon Brescher Shea shows how green living and great parenting go hand in hand to teach kids kindness, compassion, resilience, and grit--all while giving them the lifelong tools they need to be successful, engaged, and independent.

Growing Sustainable Together is packed with easy tips, expert parenting advice, and practical hands-on activities for the toddler years up through the early teens. The enriching activities, resource guides, and recommended book lists in each chapter distill core sustainablility knowledge, like:

Understanding energy efficiency and renewables

Instilling anti-waste and anti-consumerist values

Learning where our food comes from

Developing a lifelong love for environmental activism, volunteering, and community engagement

The book concludes with a practical appendix that gives talking points for engaging teachers, school systems, and fellow parents in eco-friendly activities.

Critic reviews

“This is an important book, in content and in tone. Too often, sustainability is seen as energy-efficiency, as a technical task with a slightly punitive tone. Shannon Brescher Shea takes an entirely different approach. She shows how family members can grow closer to each other by becoming closer to the Earth. I can imagine thousands of parents, grandparents, and kids following her wise words.”
—Richard Louv, author of Last Child in the Woods and Our Wild Calling

“Growing Sustainable Together offers modern parents a plethora of realistic ideas for engaging their children in activities and family habits that will sustain the environment. From gardening, recycling and picking up litter to eschewing a car and overload of material possessions, author Shannon Brescher Shea shows how our everyday choices can help protect our planet. This readable, persuasive and accessible book will inspire both parents new to environmental action and long-time activists struggling to continue sustainable practices post-baby. If you want to raise justice-seeking, responsible, green-minded children, Growing Sustainable Together is the guide for you. An exciting, research-grounded book for environmentally oriented parents!”
—Katherine Reynolds Lewis, author of The Good News About Bad Behavior