Sing Up the Earth! (KIDS)
- Details
- Category: Authors
- Published: Tuesday, 17 February 2026 09:00
Care and author/naturalist Cheryl Hellner discuss creation and our relationship with the earth and how we can better steward it. She shares how to nourish a child's sense of belonging through nature and that a story is a living thing that grows, changes, and leads.
Tune in to Care's Wednesday Bookmark interview with Cheryl Hellner, airing February 18, 2026 at 4:30 pm!
Purchase Sing Up the Earth! here.
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Book Description:
A joyful, lyrical picture book celebration of creativity, art, nature, and the family bonds that inspire and sustain us through good times and bad--from the viewpoint of a young girl and the love she shares with her grandfather.
Meadow loves making musical instruments out of clay--the very body of the Earth--just as her grandpa does. Together this family pair makes flutes, whistles, ocarinas, horns, and round pot drums that sing with the voices of nature. Wild animals respond to the joyful sounds by echoing back their own calls. Meadow and Grandpa sing up the earth, and the earth sings back to them.
One night, a fierce storm destroys their workshop, and Grandpa's beloved ocarina, an ancient instrument shaped like a hawk, is nowhere to be found. Grief and loss fill the air with ash and smoke. What follows is a gentle, heartwarming journey where Meadow uncovers hope and the secret behind Grandpa's breathtaking music that "sings up the earth."
Brimming with joy and wonder, Sing Up the Earth! celebrates a deep kinship between humans and nature while tenderly conveying the love that connects families from one generation to the next. Through lyrical storytelling and rich, evocative illustrations, Sing Up the Earth!:
- Fosters children's innate love of nature and encourages "green time" over "screen time."
- Helps children face loss and hardship through conversations with caring adults.
- Celebrates the beauty of intergenerational love and friendship, particularly between a child and a grandparent.
- Inspires the artist within each child by cultivating imagination, curiosity, and the freedom to try new things even if they make mistakes.
- Includes an Author's Note describing the centuries-old, multicultural art of making musical instruments out of clay.
A book for all times and seasons, Sing Up the Earth inspires young readers to discover the joy and satisfaction of making things with their own hands, and to experience the comforting wisdom of older generations. Perfect for family reading, classroom story time, and even adult discussion groups, this uplifting story offers an invitation to deepen our relationship with the earth and a love that holds all things.
My lifelong love of language began at the age of nine when my fourth-grade teacher opened every school day with a poem. I was entranced. I began writing and filling one brown spiral notebook after another with the music, rhythm, and meaning of words.
After graduate school when I became a teacher and education specialist in my local Head Start program, a new fascination emerged: the braiding of story and visual images we call the picture book. Sitting on the floor of the Cheshire Cat bookstore in D.C., I spent hours poring over story after story. Sing Up the Earth! fulfills a long-held dream of writing and publishing my own picture book stories.
I write, and tell, stories that nourish our children's relationship with the living Earth, and with their own beautiful and mysterious creativity.
As a teacher/retreat leader and writer with Dayspring Earth Ministry, my work is to awaken and nourish awe, reverence, and wonder for the sacred Earth community which is alive and singing, asking--especially now--for our wisdom and care.
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