8 favourite books about endangered species

There’s an art installation happening in New York on Saturday night (1 August 2015 NY time)  –  images of endangered animals will be projected onto the Empire State Building.

It's the brain child of Travis Threlkel - this from NYT, “Illuminating the Plight of Endangered Species, at the Empire State Building” :

"Mr. Threlkel, who designed the euphoric lighting for the Grateful Dead’s recent farewell concert, excitedly described plans for a cascade of animal images, some moving, including a sequence involving human hands that will morph into a kinetic blooming, ending with a representation of Mother Earth looking “not angry, but powerful.”’ 

It looks pretty wonderful to me and according to the article they're trying to live stream the whole show. It will run from 9 pm – 12 am on Saturday 1 August New York time – and the live stream is scheduled for Sunday 2 August between 11 am and 2 pm Australian time if you can catch it. There's a link about timing in the NYT article and here's the link to the slide show.

Accessible art creates vibrancy in a community and lifts minds and hearts to a happy state, don’t you think? This is art that’s public, free and completely relatable. Love that.  

And then to have art that makes such an important statement makes it even more wonderful. 

The ‘how’ of saving extinct species may be politically fraught with difficulty, but pretty much everyone is on board with the ‘why’ and the ‘when.’  Why: because every species is important, beautiful and fascinating, and when: now!

There’s a whole slew of picture books about endangered species, but a few of our favourites are:

COUNT THEM WHILE YOU CAN by Anne Bowman

ME ... JANE by Patrick McDonnell

ANIMALIUM  by Jenny Broom

CROCODILE'S TEARS by Alex Beard

TYGER! TYGER! by Elizabeth Stanley

OI! GET OFF OUR TRAIN by John Burningham

WHADDAYAMEAN by John Burningham

Pretty much anything by Graeme Base but especially THE ELEVENTH HOUR

Making art accessible and affordable is one of the very many reasons I love picture books so much. It's great when art is available on a large scale too, hooray for NYC and here's hoping the live stream works.