When explaining the concepts of environmental protection and conservation to children, adults often pull out The Lorax, the picture book featuring Dr. Seuss’s titular environmental advocate. This book, which was published in 1971, at the height of the early environmental movement, and just a year before the passage of the Clean Water Act, has remained relevant for decades because it encourages a belief in protecting and speaking for the environment, which has no voice of its own.

The Lorax, as he famously states, speaks for the trees. But to speak for individual trees is one thing; how might one speak for as large a body as the river?

With the help of my friend Grace Bautista, we put together this storybook guide to “speaking for the river,” inspired by the work done by the Potomac Conservancy, a D.C.-based group devoted to protecting the Potomac River.