Environmental justice is a pressing issue affecting global and local communities. While many children and youth are actively engaged in environmental activism, there is a tendency to uphold a single narrative and narrow perspectives of what environmental activism looks like (Damico et al., 2020; Johnson, 2020). These views often focus on white environmentalists like John Muir, Greta Thunberg, and Jane Goodall and symbols such as the Lorax and polar bears on melting ice caps (Mankart, 2019; Starr, 2019). Thomas (2022) argues that a lack of  representation of marginalized voices leads to an ineffective form of mainstream environmentalism that fails to address the liberation of all people and the planet.

These narrow depictions and examples are also often present in how picturebooks are used to teach about environmentalism with young children, which can disengage readers and young people from seeing themselves in texts and actively participating in collective activism. However, given the power of picturebooks to explore activism (Fletcher & Holyoke, 2023), we look to picturebooks to deeply examine the world and word of environmental literacies and justice (Freire, 1970/2018) and the possibilities to expand these narrow conceptions of environmentalism with young readers. There is a responsibility for teachers, librarians and caregivers to engage in critical views of environmental justice and shared activism with children.