Wild Wonders Book List

It’s always fun to have additional reading materials to go along with unit studies to deepen our learners’ connection with the material and further invite curiosity and engagement. We’ve curated a list of a few of our favourite books as suggested companions to our unit studies! Wild Wonders has so many opportunities for expanding on what we cover in this unit, and this is far from an exhaustive list. We’d love to hear what books you read alongside Wild Wonders! 

Over and Under the Pond by Kate Messner
(Picture Book)

This book follows a child and his mother and their day in a rowboat on a pond. The child wonders what is hidden beneath the surface of the water. The poetic style and beautiful illustrations (by Christopher Silas Neil) explore the plants and animals that make up the rich ecosystem of a mountain pond. 

This book is a beautiful companion to Wild Wonders’ lessons on ecosystems and interdependence. Showing learners that a single ecosystem contains many interconnected areas, each with their own inhabitants and symbiotic relationships. It works well as a read-aloud for the first week’s lessons. Another book in this series, Over and Under the Wetlands is another perfect fit! 

Sweetgrass by Theresa Meuse (Picture Book)

This story follows Warren, his older cousin Matthew, and their Auntie as they pick sweetgrass in early July. His Auntie’s traditional Mi’kmaw knowledge, Warren learns about the many uses for sweetgrass, and the importance of not taking more than he needs. This book is part of Nimbus Publishing’s Indigenous Knowledge Series, and provides a beautiful look at a special Mi’kmaw tradition. 

This book pairs well with Wild Wonders’ lesson on Indigenous ecological knowledge. Beyond that, this story models an example of sustainable harvesting, adding the important connection between humans and ecosystems. Humans are part of ecosystems, too, and the traditional Mi’kmaw knowledge in Sweetgrass shows the importance of living in balance with the land. This story centres respect, gratitude, and intergenerational teaching while weaving the threads of interconnected ecosystems. 

We Are Water Protectors by Carole Lindstrom (picture book)

This book tells the story of an Ojibwe girl who fights against an oil pipeline to protect the water supply of her people. The girl recalls her grandmother teaching her about the sanctity of water, and her people foretell a black snake that will one day come to destroy their land and poison their water. The young girl rallies her community to fight with her to defend the water. This book was written as a response to the Dakota Access Pipeline protests, and illustrator Michaela Goade won the 2021 Caldecott Medal for her beautiful artwork, which made her the first Indigenous recipient of the award. 

We Are Water Protectors is another fantastic companion to Wild Wonders’ lesson on Indigenous environmental knowledge. This story invites readers into active advocacy for their land, showing readers that caring for an ecosystem means standing up to protect it, not just passively observing it. It connects the understanding of human role in ecosystems, as well as creating open conversation about keystone environmental issues, such as water contamination and the ripple effects on plants, animals, and communities. 

The Water Walker by Joanne Robertson

Based on the real-life journey of Anishinaabe grandmother Josephine Mandamin, The Water Walker follows an Ojibwe elder who walks thousands of miles around the Great Lakes, carrying a copper pail of water, to raise awareness that “water is life”. This story is told in a blend of English and Anishinaabemowin, and it captures the physical journey and the conviction behind it.

The Water Walker centres Indigenous knowledge and stewardship, reminding readers that the wonder of our world isn’t just about untouched nature, but about relationship, responsibility, and the belief that our natural resources are sacred. This book gives students a model of quiet, sustained activism and broadens the perspective beyond Western conservation framework, showing how different cultures understand the human role within the natural world. 

Follow the Moon Home by Philippe Cousteau and Deborah Hopkinson

When Vivienne sees the ocean’s shore is littered with trash, she starts a class project to help endangered sea turtle hatchlings safely make it from their nests to the water. These turtles have been getting lost and disoriented by artificial lights along the beach. Vivienne’s school project quickly becomes a community-wide movement, as Vivienne and her peers recruit neighbours, businesses, and local government to change how the town treats the seashore. 

This picture book models civic engagement in a youth-led environmental action, teaching young readers that their voices matter. It reinforces the importance of observation and conservation, as well as the value in caring for the natural world around us. Young readers learn their responsibility in a symbiotic relationship with nature, and that respect for our shared wild world goes a long way. 

Mama Built a Little Nest by Jennifer Ward

This rhyming picture book tours multiple different bird species and the astonishing variety of nests they build. From a hummingbird’s tiny cup the size of a walnut to a bald eagle’s nest that can weigh a ton, each rhyming page is paired with a sidebar of facts about each bird species featured. 

This adorable book is wonder for the sake of wonder, featuring the ingenuity, diversity, and resourcefulness as animals as architects and as parents. The scientific facts sidebars on each page invite curiosity and observation for young birders. This book is a lovely way to remind us of the importance of creativity and ingenuity, as well as the simple value of existing in nature. 

The Wild Robot by Peter Brown (Middle Grade)

After a shipwreck strands robot ROZZUM unit 7134 (“Roz”) on a remote, wild island, she must learn to survive and communicate with the island’s animals, who are initially terrified of her. Roz learns to earn the animals’ trust, adopts an orphaned gosling named Brightbill, and learns what it means to be part of a community, even as she remains an outsider built for a different world. 

The Wild Robot is a perfect companion to Wild Wonders. Roz’s survival on the island forces her to observe real ecological concepts in action: animal adaptations, predator-prey relationships, seasonal changes, and how every creature plays a role in the island’s ecosystem. Since Roz’s presence on the island shapes the relationships among the animals, it also teaches about interdependence and models how humans become ecosystem engineers. Beyond the science aspects, this story also weaves together stories of kindness, found family, courage, connection, and inclusion. 

The Last Bear by Hannah Gold (Middle Grade)

This middle grade novel follows 11 year old April and her father to Bear Island in the Arctic, where her scientist father has been sent to study the effects of global warming. Her father tells her there are no polar bears left on the island, but one night, April spots something bear shaped. She sees a hungry, lonely, lost polar bear and bonds with him, cares for him, and comes up with a plan for saving him and taking him back home to Svalbard. This novel highlights real geography, with Bear Island being a real island off the coast of Norway, and Svalbard an archipelago close to the North Pole, which is home to about 3,000 polar bears. 

This novel strengthens the Wild Wonders themes of adaptation, keystone species, and ecosystem fragility, especially for Arctic and polar habitats. Bear’s isolation and starvation illustrate real consequences of melting sea ice on species that depend on it for hunting. The Last Bear gives readers an emotional, narrative connection to climate and habitat loss, which can sometimes feel abstract. April’s fierce determination to save Bear also ties in themes of courage, empathy, and taking meaningful action, modeling the idea that no one is too young or insignificant to make a difference. 

Hoot by Carl Hiaasen

Roy Eberhardt moves to Florida expecting to find bullies and extreme boredom, but he comes across a mystery when he discovers a barefoot, mysterious boy running through backyards, and a construction site for a pancake restaurant that’s about to destroy a colony of endangered burrowing owls. Roy gets pulled into a wild and ridiculous plan to save the owls, and he has to decide what he’s willing to sacrifice to do the right thing. 

Hoot tackles the environmental stakes seen in corporate development versus habitat preservation, while creating a funny and adventurous story about stubborn acts of resistance. This book is a great companion to Wild Wonders, as it opens the door for discussing environmental justice, civil disobedience, and the tension between economic growth and conservation through the lens of a hilarious adventure. It also reinforces the idea that protecting the natural world starts with one person deciding to pay attention. 

A Wolf Called Wander by Rosanne Parry

Based on the true story of a real wolf who was tracked using a GPS collar, this novel follows Swift, a young wolf who loses his pack in a violent territorial battle and must journey alone across hundreds of miles of Pacific Northwest wilderness to find a new home. It is told from Swift’s point of view, capturing the instinct, hunger, danger, and resilience of a young animal navigating a world that is both beautiful and brutal. 

Instead of humans encountering the wild as observers, readers experience the wild as an inhabitant of the wild. Swift’s journey is an in depth view of animal instinct, ecosystem interdependence, and the real geography and wildlife biology of wolf migration, due to the fact that the book is inspired by an actual wolf’s journey. A Wolf Called Wander opens up communication about how different species navigate human-altered landscapes, as well as inviting students to imagine wonder and struggle from a nonhuman perspective. This beautifully models what Wild Wonders explains: that the natural world isn’t just something humans discover, each living organism has lives, drives, and stories independent of us that are worth protecting. 

Song for a Whale by Lynne Kelly

This story follows Iris, a 12 year old Deaf girl who navigates a hearing world feeling isolated and alone. She becomes fascinated by the story of a whale who calls at a frequency no other whale can hear, meaning he’s likely spent his whole life alone and unheard. Iris, determined to find a way to reach him, throws herself into fixing up an old radio, researching whale songs, and convincing her family to help find the whale, all while dealing with her own experiences of communication, difference, and isolation. 

Song for a Whale weaves together two threads that run throughout the Wild Wonders unit: scientific curiosity and personal identity and connection. Iris’s problem-solving models hands-on inquiry into marine biology, habitats, and animal behaviour, while the emotional aspects of the story express what it’s like to be unheard, trying to help a creature who is literally unheard. The story creates a powerful metaphor for empathy that spans humanity. It opens doors to talk about disability representation, communication, and the importance of accessibility even in the natural world. 

The Grizzly Mother by Hetxw’ms Gyetxw (Brett D. Huson)

This is book two in the Mothers of Xsan series. It is a nonfiction middle grade picture book that follows a mother grizzly bear and her cubs through several years of life near the Gitxsan Territories in British Columbia. From emerging from hibernation through learning to fish and eventually becoming independent, The Grizzly Mother highlights the relationship between the grizzly and the Gitxsan people, who see the grizzly as an important part of the natural landscape, sharing the land, the river, and the salmon. 

This book deepens the threads of Indigenous-knowledge while observing a single animal’s life cycle. This book doesn’t treat the grizzly as separate from human life, but reinforces how animals, people, and ecosystems are intertwined. The bear, the salmon, the river, and the Gitxsan people are all bound together in symbiosis. The author works to bridge Indigenous knowledge and Western science, and does so beautifully in this book, and the rest in the series. 

Dry by Neal Shusterman 

When a decades-long drought causes California’s water supply to run completely dry, 16 year old Alyssa watches as the “tap out” creates panic and aggression among her neighbourhood. Alyssa, her younger brother, and a group of other teenagers are left to find a way to survive, and are forced to decide who they want to become. 

Wild Wonders is built around humanity’s relationship with the natural world. We explore its beauty, power, and adaptability. This novel flips the narrative, and encourages readers to face what would happen if a resource we often take for granted vanished. It’s a natural pairing for discussions of water scarcity, climate change, and ecological interdependence, while also opening up personal exploration and conversation around humanity, how we relate to one another, and how the natural world shapes human character. 

Firekeeper’s Daughter by Angeline Boulley

Eighteen year old Daunis Fontaine is caught between two worlds: her Ojibwe community in Sault Ste. Marie and the world of colonial assimilation. When she witnesses an act of violence, she’s pulled into an undercover investigation into a drug ring that is poisoning her community. This forces her to use her knowledge of chemistry, culture, and kinship to protect the people and land she loves. 

Fire Keeper’s Daughter’s connection to Wild Wonders is found in community, identity, and cultural survival. Lake Superior runs through this story as its own presence, highlighting Anishinaabe knowledge systems, medicine, and connection to land and water. Daunis’s scientific curiosity and traditional plant knowledge sit side by side, blending modern and Indigenous ways of understanding the natural world. This centres contemporary Indigenous voices, showing that Indigenous relationships to land aren’t historical artifacts, they’re lived, present day, and under active threat from outside forces. *Note: this is an upper-YA novel with mature content (violence, sexual assault references, drug use), so it likely fits best as an older reader selection depending on your learner’s age and maturity. 

The Last Tiger by Julia Riew and Brad Riew

In a colonised fantasy land where tigers are being hunted to extinction by the ruling Dragon Empire, two teens from opposite sides of the divide (Dragons and Tigers) are drawn together in a quest to find the last surviving tiger. This novel is set in a fantastical version of occupied Korea, following Lee Seung, a servant who is desperate to escape poverty, and Choi Eunji, a wealthy noble’s daughter who longs for freedom. This novel is inspired by true stories from the authors’ grandparents’ lives during one of the darkest periods in Korean history. 

The Last Tiger begs to expand the central themes of Wild Wonders, using the tiger’s near-extinction as a symbol for cultural survival under colonisation. The system uses Dragon ki to represent colonial strength, and Tiger ki to represent suppressed cultural identity, with the Dragon Empire hunting tigers to prevent the resurgence of Tiger ki. The endangered animal is not just a conservation concern, but a symbol of identity and resistance. This story of fighting to save an endangered species is about far more than wildlife conservation, it functions as allegory, asking readers to think about extinction, colonisation, and resistance as one. 

*Note: this is an upper-YA fantasy novel and contains themes of colonization and oppression*