Image: Syncrude Canada

Shred the slopes at Vista Ridge. Zip through the forests and wetlands at Gateway Hill on your bike. Soar over Wood Buffalo on a hang glider – but watch out for those tall trees! Three games, endless fun! Get Syncrude’s Trail Blazer now! Play, learn and explore Wood Buffalo, Alberta with three high-octane games where you play Syncrude Canada’s über-cool mascot, the Wood Bison. Collect as many coins as you can along the way, and you could find yourself at the top of the leaderboard.

I wish I was making this up, but that’s a screenshot and promo from “Trail Blazer,” a new game that Syncrude (one of the the world’s biggest tar sands companies) hopes will brainwash kids into thinking that oil is totally dope, or fresh, or baller, or whatever word people use for “awesome” nowadays.

Look at all those fresh green trees and pristine snow! We must’ve had it wrong all this time — apparently, the tar sands region looks a lot like Aspen, Colorado instead of the mining colony from Avatar. So, just to make sure I wasn’t getting Alberta mixed up with some other place, I double-checked and…oh, wait a sec…here’s a photo of what it really looks like:

Photo: Peter Essick

Photo: Jason Woodhead

Image: Syncrude Canada

If you want to find out what’s really happening to Canada’s wildlife, a slick game is the last place to start. There’s a name for this kind of thing–it’s called “greenwashing” and it basically means pretending to be eco-friendly while doing the exact opposite in real life. This is hardly the first time the industry used pretty graphics to lie to the public (remember Enbridge, Inc’s fake map?) but it’s in the running for “Sleaziest Advertising of 2012.”

Felice Stadler, NWF’s director of energy campaigns, visited Alberta a while ago to tour the tar sands region — I still remember how shaken she was when she came back — and her reaction to seeing the game was bitter:

Believe me, there are no trees after Syncrude has paid a visit to the boreal forest.

But there’s more at stake than trees and wolves. We just re-elected a president who says he’s committed to battling climate change–the most dangerous threat to our planet’s future and the survival of people and wildlife everywhere. Now, he has a chance to prove it by rejecting the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, which would speed up development of the tar sands and light the fuse of the world’s biggest carbon bomb, but so far the White House has sent mixed signals about its intentions. Hurricane Sandy was a harsh reminder of what happens when that carbon bomb explodes, and Americans need President Obama and Congress to draw a line in the sand and say “NO!” to KXL and projects like it.

Make your voice heard! Tell the White House to reject the Keystone XL pipeline and prevent climate catastrophe.

Hello Ocean is a sense-tingling read-aloud, whether your family is anticipating a trip to the beach or simply re-visiting memories. In poetic language, author Pam Munoz Ryan explores an ocean setting through each of the five senses. The little-girl narrator sees “amber seaweed,” “speckled sand,” and “bubbly waves,” hears the “screak of gulls,” smells “reeky fish” and “musty shells.”

The carefully researched acrylic paintings by Mark Astrella feature native flora and fauna and show a child taking in the natural world at her own pace. Through her senses and self-directed explorations, this little girl fully experiences and deeply intuits the wonder that is the ocean.

This book was one of my daughter’s favorites when she was a preschooler (she’s now nine). We’d read and talk about Hello Ocean no matter the season. Some of its pull may have been the sea’s unique beauty, but I think there was another powerful draw as well: the invitation to be fully alive to the natural world. On her own, my daughter would often play a kind of “five-senses game.” She’d look closely at a stick, a stone, or a pond, for example, listen to its sounds or the sounds she could make with it, smell, touch, and yes, sometimes, taste it.

Hello Ocean invites us, adults and kids alike, to slow down, to be more aware of our senses and the world around us. In his recent Green Hour Blog, Robert Kesten, executive director of the Center for Screen Time Awareness, cautioned that modern technology (computers, TV, video games) takes us “out of the world in which we live.” So, too, does our hurried pace of life. Commutes can be long, chores many, hours few, and schedules complex. Ai-yi-yi!

Like many modern parents, I can certainly get swept into a multi-tasking frenzy. But–hey!–there’s an ocean out there, beckoning, and even that tree in the backyard is calling. Would you and your child like to take five (five minutes and five senses) and experience either or both?

Hello Ocean is by Pam Munoz Ryan, and was published by Charlesbridge Publishing in 2001. For ages 1 to 7 , it is available in a bilingual English/Spanish edition.

Mary Quattlebaum is the author of 15 award-winning children’s books, including Jackson Jones and the Puddle of Thorns (Random House) and two chapter-book sequels, all set in a city community garden. Check www.maryquattlebaum.com for activities connected with Mary’s books.