April 22 is Earth Day. Appropriately enough the Santa Monica Public Library and the City of Santa Monica’s Environmental Programs Division is sponsoring a new literary award that aims to ”commend authors, illustrators, and publishers who produce quality books for adults and young people that make significant contributions to, support the ideas of, and broaden public awareness of sustainability”. The Green Prize for Sustainable Literature will be awarded in September 2007 in the categories of adult fiction, adult nonfiction, youth fiction and  youth nonfiction.

Books published in the United States during the 2006 calendar year are eligible for the prize but publishers must hurry to submit their candidates as the deadline is April 30! And this means you, Abrams publicists! One book that sprang immediately to mind as an excellent candidate in the nonfiction adult category is Worldchanging: A User’s Guide for the 21 Century (Abrams, 2006).

Edited by environmentalist  Alex Stephens of the popular blog worldchanging.com, ”this beautifully designed volume (which comes with its own slipcover)”, as LJ reviewer editor Irwin Weintraub raved in a LJ Xpress review last December, “collects ideas and workable solutions from more than 60 contributors that demonstrate the human potential to create a better future and a sustainable planet.” 

While this volume meets the the prize’s basic sustainability criteria (future and long-term oriented, awareness of ecological and resource limitations, regional and global in scope,etc.), the sponsors of this award  strangely forgot to include sustainable requirements for the nominees’ physical production, such as  requesting that a certain percentage of the submitted title  be printed on recycled paper or on paper that comes from environmentally managed forests (see “Harry Potter Goes Green”). Fortunately, Worldchanging is ahead of the game, having been printed on environmentally friendly  New Leaf Paper. And the publisher went one step further by purchasing wind power credits equivalent to the amount of electricity used to produce the book.