Inspired by the many Indigenous-led movements across North America, this story is a rallying cry to safeguard the Earth’s water from harm and corruption. This bold and colourful picture book is best suited for readers aged three to seven.
Read our Librarian’s top climate choices for children here.
Ever since its publication in 1962, Rachel Carson’s eloquent, ground-breaking investigation into the devastating effects of pesticides has been recognised as a landmark environmental text. It is also proof that literature can lead to actual change: Silent Spring’s meticulous scientific examination of the widely-used chemical agent DDT and its consequences galvanised activists, the public and policy-makers alike, triggering legislative changes which ultimately led to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency in the United States.
Carson’s masterpiece is also a reminder that it is through connecting with the natural world that we can find the resources to save it: “Those who contemplate the beauty of the Earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts.”
Read more of our Climate Classics: timeless works exploring themes of climate change and biodiversity loss.
“Life is something we need to stop correcting…Every one of us is an experiment, and we don’t even know what the experiment is testing. Every belief will be outgrown, in time.”
In the Booker-shortlisted follow-up to The Overstory, Power’s narrator Theo Byrne is a university astrobiologist who has found a way to search for life on other planets dozens of light years away. But he is also mourning the death of his environmental-activist wife and caring for Robin, their neurodivergent nine-year-old. Robin is funny, loving and intensely engaged in the natural world. But he becomes increasingly disturbed, and after a violent outburst at school, the strength of the father-son bond will be tested to its limits. What can a father do, when those around him refuse to understand his rare and troubled child? And how can he reveal to his boy the truth about our bewildered world?
‘Powers has the rare gift of being able to deal with big ideas while keeping you interested in the lives and emotions of his characters.’ – Sebastian Faulks
“Read our Librarian’s top climate change fiction picks by heading to our Fiction section”