Saving Polar Bears and Celebrating Earth

plus a new way to support teachers and a few recommendations for Independent Bookstore Day

Author

Little Thoughts Press
April 24, 2025

Hello! I hope you all had a lovely Earth Day on Tuesday and took the opportunity to get outside and enjoy nature, celebrate the wonder of our world, and brainstorm small but sustainable actions you can take to help support and nurture our environment. I really love Earth Day as a way to check in with my own connection to the natural world and the ways in which I am engaging with environmental protection, appreciation and justice.

Here’s a poem by the super-talented Linda Middleton from our Go Wild! issue that is perfect for both celebrating Earth this week and all year long! Let’s all play our small parts.

Speaking of playing a small part, Little Thoughts Press is dedicated to supporting literacy and promoting access to reading for all children. Between book bans, cuts to education funding, and the existing financial strains on classrooms to provide supplies and educational materials for their students, our teachers and schools are shouldering a great burden in their efforts to support, educate and help raise our children.

We at Little Thoughts Press would like to further our mission to support literacy and education by dedicating a portion of our sales from our issues directly to classroom funding. Moving forward, for each issue, we will randomly select a teacher to support and donate $1 from every sale of the issue to help fund that teacher's classroom. If you are a teacher, or you would like to recommend a teacher to add to our list, please complete this form. We ask that the teacher have a Donor’s Choose, GoFundMe or similar donation request site that we can send our donation through. At this time, we would like to prioritize US-based public schools, so we ask that your recommendations meet those requirements.

Sarah Atherton’s story “Save the Polar Bears” featured in our Go Wild! issue is a clever, inspirational tale about the kind of actions kids can take to help protect wildlife. Thanks to Sarah for sharing a little more about what inspired the unique structure for this story, and the fun twist at the end!

Little Thoughts Press: I have such a fondness for stories that use epistolary elements. The Jolly Postman was one of my favorite books growing up. In your story “Save the Polar Bears,” a kid, Grace, learns that polar bears are in danger of extinction and sends a letter to the Arctic asking the polar bears how she can help save them. Can you talk about why you chose letter writing as a framework for this story? There’s a lovely little twist at the end. Did you have that idea in mind from the start or did it develop as the rest of the story came together?

Sarah Atherton: I chose letter writing as a framework for "Save the Polar Bears" because I wanted to get inside the mind of an inquisitive child and I wanted to make the connection possible for long-distance communication. I kind of had the twist in mind from the start because I wanted it to be real. I liked the idea of children perhaps believing that the polar bears were answering Grace’s questions but then wanted it to finish with a touch of reality.

You can find our full interview, including how Sarah got started writing kid-lit, her favorite kid-lit authors and more here.

Plus be sure to check out Sarah’s picture book Bella’s Butterflies. Saturday, April 26th is Independent Bookstore Day here in the U.S. Grab a copy of Bella’s Butterflies and all your favorite kid-lit books at your local bookshop or through Bookshop.org to support independent bookstores!

Some recent favorite reads in our house have been the Louis Sachar classic, Holes, The Swifts: A Dictionary of Scoundrels by Beth Lincoln, and Brigit Young’s Banned Books, Crop Tops, and Other Bad Influences.  

Find links to all of our past issues, available in print or to download for free, here. Issue 10: An Ekphrasis Adventure will be published in May and will open for pre-orders soon! Our 11th issue will open for submissions in May and the theme and submission information will be announced in the coming weeks. Keep an eye on our Blue Sky and your inboxes for updates about both Issue 10 & 11!

Thank you for reading and supporting Little Thoughts Press!

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