"Moot" -- An international children's picture book about an 8-year-old Dutch girl who wants to save the world | Danny Bloom

Imagine there’s a red-headed, freckled little Dutch girl named Moot who wants so much to help protect the planet and save the world. She lives just outside Amsterdam, with her mother and father, older sister Lila and Grandma Bell. She asked a grown-up to write a picture book for kids about her interest in creating a sustainable world, and someone did.

Meet Daniel Halevi Bloom, author of the 1985 picture book “Bubbie and Zadie Come to My House,” first published in New York by the Villard imprint at Random House and then reprinted in 2006 when Rudy Shur brought out a new edition with a new cover and inside art.

Bloom is a climate activist with an eye on the future, but for this picture book about a little girl named Moot, he wanted to focus on sustainability issues, from the viewpoint of a little Dutch girl with a big heart and a far-seeing mind. So he sat down the other day and wrote ”Moot: An international children’s picture book about an 8-year-old Dutch girl who wants to save the world.”

The book is available online free of charge, a very short read, just 10 or 20 minutes if you read it out loud to your children or students in elementary school. It’s a read-out-loud kind of book, with the adult reader using their emotions and voice to project the thoughts and feelings of Moot.

For the time being, the book will remain online only and there are no plans to bring the story to a publishing house or an ebook publisher. Bloom likes the book the way it is, and he calls it a blook (for blog + book). However, if someday a publisher in North America or Europe wants to bring the story out as a real, physical, in-your-hands picture book of about 32 pages, the author will be happy to talk about it.

For now, the book is yours to enjoy and use as you wish, and if you find some children you want to hear the book read out loud, then by all means make a hard copy of the story by printing it out on paper and then reading it to your own children or your school class. This book is not about making money, and it will always be free of charge online.

Just to give you a taste of the book’s 10 short chapters, here’s the first chapter:

“I think we should start thinking about taking all the cars and trucks and taxis and buses off the roads, all around the world, in order to lower our CO2 emissions,” said Moot, an 8-year-old Dutch girl who lives in a small village outside Amsterdam.

“But Moot, that’s just not possible, said her mother. “People need cars and taxis and buses to go to work, and take children to school, and for families to go on vacations in the summer.

And in Amsterdam and London and Paris and New York, taxis are in-dis-pen-sable,” said her father, enunciating each syllable in that long adult word so that Moor could understand it better. “Your idea is a good one and is to be commended, but Moot, it’s a moot question. We just can’t do it.”

Moot didn’t look in-dis-pen-sable but she did look in-con-sol-able. Every time she had a new idea about how to save the Earth from CO2 overload, her idea was mooted by the grown-ups.

“They just don’t understand me,” said Moot, trying to console herself.

But Moot had other ideas and she was not one to give up quietly and go away without a fight.”