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[Photo by Carolyn V on Unsplash]

This weekend, the environmentally conscious all around the world will come together to celebrate Earth Day—a day for spreading awareness and taking action to save the planet. There’s no doubt that taking care of our home is a hugely important issue, and there is so much that everyone can do to make a difference. Even in small ways, like taking shorter showers, recycling, riding a bike, or walking rather than taking a car. But what can we do as readers? We take a look at some of the ways that bookworms can help the Earth…and not only on April 22.

[Movie still from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Warner Bros.] 

Libraries are dangerous places. They are filled with adventure, with daring quests and magic spells, with fearsome beasts, killers, and vampires. They are packed to the brim with solo travel to far off places, with haunted houses and darkened alleyways. Some would even say that libraries are treacherous no matter what stories we read in them – after all, a little learning is a dangerous thing.

[The Book of Dust]

Last month, fans of Phillip Pullman’s incredible coming-of-age fantasy series His Dark Materials were overjoyed to hear that Lyra Belacqua is coming back in a whole new series: The Book of Dust, which is set for release October 19^th, 2017. The upcoming trilogy starts ten years before the events of The Golden Compass, with the later novels to be set ten years after The Amber Spyglass. This news immediately set people wondering about what we’ll find out about Lyra’s story, both before and after the events that made her famous in so many worlds. Pullman created a beautifully detailed universe in Lyra’s Oxford, and in the many worlds that she and Will discover, so we always knew that there were still so many more stories to tell…and now we get to hear them!

This month, Disney’s live action adaptation of the animated classic, Beauty and the Beast, hit theaters – and bookworms everywhere are thrilled to see this library-loving princess brought to life. Belle has always been the Disney Princess for girls who love to read. After all, the very first time that we meet Belle, she’s headed to the bookstore (and to a scene that put ‘sliding on a rolling bookcase ladder’ on every bucket list). Later, the Beast shows us the way to every reader’s heart when he presents Belle with a stunning library. Books are everything to Belle – they are her form of escapism in the town and a mark of the Beast’s love.

[Movie still from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Warner Bros.]

Brace yourselves for drunk strangers in novelty hats talking about their ‘Irish heritage’, because it’s St. Patrick’s Day once more! This Irish holiday has its roots in a saint who brought Christianity to Ireland (according to the tales), but it’s devolved into a great excuse for a mid-March party across the Western world.

We’ll admit it, February can be a bit of a gloomy month. Spring is tantalizingly close… and yet it feels so far away when the snow is still falling. The holidays are long gone and those wonderful New Year/New You intentions are fading away in the rearview mirror. But though it may be a bit ‘blah’, February also marks the birthday of one of France’s best-known novelists: Victor Hugo. Born on the 26^th in 1876, Hugo’s writing certainly suits his birth month – his most famous works (Les Miserables and The Hunchback of Notre Dame) are deeply melancholy, with death and despair at every turn.