BRATTLEBORO — Green Writers Press of Brattleboro has announced that Josie and the Fourth Grade Bike Brigade, which it published in September 2014, has been short-listed for the Green Earth Book Award in the category of children's fiction.
The annual award is given for books that raise awareness of the beauty of the natural world and the responsibility we have to protect it.
The Green Earth Book Award recognizes books in five categories - Picture Book, Children's Fiction, Children's Nonfiction, Young Adult Fiction, and Young Adult Nonfiction. The winning author/illustrator in each category receives $2,000.
Josie and the Fourth Grade Bike Brigade was written by Brooklyn, N.Y., residents Antonia Bruno and her parents, Kenny Bruno and Beth Handman, and was illustrated by their neighbor Janet Pederson.
The first-ever children's “cli-fi” (climate fiction), it introduces a feisty 9-year-old heroine named Josie as she takes action on climate change by organizing the kids in her school.
The winners of the Green Earth Book Award will be announced on Earth Day, April 22, and awarded during the Read Green Festival on Oct. 1 at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.
Two adult titles from Green Writers Press have also been named finalists in prestigious national awards.
The Foreword Review's IndieFab Book of the Year Awards has short-listed Vermont novelist Don Bredes' young adult “cli-fi” fantasy, Polly and the One and Only World, along with Northampton, Mass., climate change professor Brian Adams' Love in the Time of Climate Change, a cli-fi romantic comedy.