ONCE UPON A PLANET

Can hopeful books help kids tame their climate anxiety?

- JASON PLAUTZ

ECONUNDRUMS

WHEN AUTHOR Katherine Applegate was touring schools for her book Wishtree-a novel on prejudice for tweens, told through an oak tree's perspective-students kept wanting to talk about the climate crisis. They were stressed about whether polar bears would die, panicked about the world they're inheriting. Their questions inspired Applegate, but she was daunted: Her previous books have dealt with heavy topics like animal cruelty and poverty. Climate collapse, though? That's a challenge.

But it's one that children are grappling with. A 2021 worldwide survey of 10,000 young people published in The Lancet found that 59 percent were very or extremely worried about climate change and 75 percent felt the future is frightening. The publishing industry has embraced the mood: According to Nielsen's publishing market research, sales of children's books related to the environment rose 69 percent between 2019 and 2021. These aren't just tales about animal tea parties or Truffula trees. Inspired by Greta Thunberg, these books capture kids' anger and despair, and are loaded with calls to action.

Take Sita Brahmachari's Where the River Runs Gold, a 2019 middle-grade novel set in a dystopian future where bees have died off and children must labor to pollinate crops. Or Lily Williams' picture book series on extinction, If Animals Disappeared, launched in 2017. We Are Water Protectors, a 2020 picture book by Carole Lindstrom, illustrated by Michaela Goade, and inspired by the Dakota Access Pipeline protests, was a bestseller.