Excerpt:
Two new picture books and a novel for young readers place children at the center of environmental calamity.
Despite all the global summits, impassioned warnings from scientists and general hand-wringing over the mounting catastrophe unleashed by our use of fossil fuels, humans are burning them more than ever. Efforts to transition to clean energy, while significant, are not happening nearly fast enough. Nature’s backlash — increased floods, fires and droughts — has begun, and it’s still building.
Some parents may want to shield their children from this grim reality. But around the world, children are already profoundly affected — 16 million by flooding in Pakistan this year alone, as rains worsened by climate change left a third of the country underwater.
Two new picture books and a novel for young readers place children at the center of climate calamity. Fittingly, they are stories of homes under threat; home, after all, is the thing climate change stalks, be it a house, a community or a livable planet. Each book offers its own lessons on how to cope with life under the monster we’ve created. The novel even shows how kids can help slay it.
