Book Review: "Gaia Girls: Enter the Earth"

In the innovative seven book “Gaia Girl” series, Harry Potter meets the Sierra Club as average girls team up with the Earth to fight back against environmental destruction. The introductory novel, “Enter the Earth,” opens with Elizabeth, a fourth grader in upstate New York whose life — until recently — had been spent going to school and exploring the countryside with her dog Maizey.

This life is soon turned upside-down as a destructive factory farming operation sets its sights on her little town of Avon.

Harmony Farms has begun buying up the town’s farmland in order to establish a Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation, or CAFO, for the wide scale raising and slaughtering of hogs. Neighbors of the town are pitted against each other, with most seeing the CAFO as a chance to sell their land and cash out. Others, such as Elizabeth’s parents, see the impending operation as a threat to their centuries-old family farm and fight to save their livelihoods.

Elizabeth’s parents aren’t the only angry ones, however, as the impending farm draws the ire of  "the living entity of the earth", Gaia. Taking the form of a talking otter, Gaia gives Elizabeth the power to telepathically cause small earthquakes, transport herself through trees and literally commune with nature by talking to plants and animals. Armed with her new environmentally friendly powers and a little help from friends, Elizabeth takes on the factory farming operation to win back her town.

While the book is intended for younger readers and is full of whimsical elements, like talking otters, Welles manages to balance the cuteness with frank depictions of factory farming operations. By combing Harry Potter-like elements with real environment issues and the social impact of Imminent Domain arguments, “Enter the Earth” is an engrossing story for all ages.