When giving your kids, "the talk", it always helps to have a book as back-up. It justifies your broaching a sensitive, potentially uncomfortable topic like…global warming. And although conservation and environmentalism is a topic for all ages, those children in pre-adolescence are just about ready to hear about the big guns of climate change. Three recent children’s books broach the topic of climate change to your middle-grades children (ages 9-12); two were penned by celebrities of the green world.

Following on the heels of the successful An Inconvenient Truth of almost the same name, Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth: The Crisis of Global Warming (Penguin Young Readers, $23.00), aims to present the same ideas from the documentary to a younger audience. The text of this book is excellent: it simplifies the ideas of the original film without talking down to young readers.

An Inconvenient Truth producer Laurie David and Cambria Gordon’s The Down-to-Earth Guide to Global Warming (Scholastic $15.99) aims to educate kids about why global warming is happening, how it is affecting our planet, and what kids can do to protect our earth. The book is packed with gorgeous photos, graphs and charts, making it accessible to visual learners, and little jokes scattered throughout the pages might be amusing to adults, as well. The Guide is even printed with soy ink on 100% FSC-certified, post-consumer recycled paper.

Finally, Gas Trees and Car Turds (Fulcrum, $16.95), written by Kirk R. Johnson, curator or the Denver Natural History museum, and illustrated by Colorado naturalist Mary Ann Bonnell, is a quick read that breaks down the science behind global warming and carbon dioxide so that children can understand it. While not as high-profile as the other two books, it does focus on explaining carbon dioxide as an invisible something that connects almost everything.