The Day the River Caught Fire: How the Cuyahoga River Exploded and Ignited the Earth Day Movement

by Barry Wittenstein (Author) Jessie Hartland (Illustrator)

The Day the River Caught Fire: How the Cuyahoga River Exploded and Ignited the Earth Day Movement
Reading Level: 2nd − 3rd Grade

Discover the true story of how a 1969 fire in one of the most polluted rivers in America sparked the national Earth Day movement in this nonfiction picture book by award-winning author Barry Wittenstein and beloved illustrator Jessie Hartland.

After the Industrial Revolution in the 1880s, the Cayuhoga River in Cleveland, Ohio, caught fire almost twenty times, earning Cleveland the nickname "The Mistake on the Lake." Waste dumping had made fires so routine that local politicians and media didn't pay them any mind, and other Cleveland residents laughed off their combustible river and even wrote songs about it.

But when the river ignited again in June 1969, the national media picked up on the story and added fuel to the fire of the recent environmental movement. A year later, in 1970, President Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency--leading to the Clean Water and Clean Air Acts--and the first Earth Day was celebrated. It was a celebration, it was a protest, and it was the beginning of a movement to save our planet.

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Hardcover
$18.99

Kirkus

A lively account of a watershed event.

Review quotes

 
Barry Wittenstein
Barry Wittenstein has worked at CBS Records, CBS News, and was a web editor and writer for Major League Baseball. He is now an elementary-school substitute teacher and children's author. This is his first book for children. Barry lives in New York, New York.

London Ladd is the illustrator of Under the Freedom Tree by Susan VanHecke, Oprah: The Little Speaker by Carole Boston Weatherford (Two Lions), and March On!: The Tay My Brother Martin Changed the World by Christine King Farris (Scholastic). London lives in Syracuse, New York.
Classification
Non-fiction
ISBN-13
9781534480834
Lexile Measure
-
Guided Reading Level
-
Publisher
Simon & Schuster/Paula Wiseman Books
Publication date
March 28, 2023
Series
-
BISAC categories
JNF037020 - Juvenile Nonfiction | Science & Nature | Environmental Conservation & Protection
JNF065000 - Juvenile Nonfiction | Recycling & Green Living
JNF071000 - Juvenile Nonfiction | Social Activism & Volunteering
Library of Congress categories
United States
Ohio
Environmentalism
Earth Day
Cuyahoga River
Oil pollution of rivers, harbors, etc

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