A Children’s Book about Climate Change

green | June 24th, 2009 - 5:35 PM

We must never underestimate a child’s intelligence, or their capacity and eagerness to learn something new.

Telling our children about climate change could leave them angry, worried or even traumatised.  So when and how should we do it, asks Leo Hickman.

“War is never so ugly as when you explain it to children.”

The same can be said about climate change.Leo Hickman struggled to explain concepts such as, say, the albedo effect, chlorofluorocarbons and the Milankovitch cycles, and was forever troubled by a central question:

What is the right age to tell a child about climate change?

book-jellyfishHe asks “How do you go about discussing a subject that will be an increasingly impactful and predominantly negative presence in their lives?  Should we be shielding children from the bad news for as long as possible? Or do they deserve to know the truth as early as possible? After all, their generation will have to pick up the tab, as well as live with much of the fallout.”

Leo Hickman has spent the past year writing a book aimed at 9- to 12-years-olds that will hopefully spark in its readers a lifelong concern about climate change and, more importantly, a passion to be part of the solution. His daughter Esme said to him: “Why don’t we just stop hurting the planet?”

As we all can only think, we couldn’t have put it better ourselves.

Amazing Fact from the book.

Could you catch the sun’s rays?

The sun’s rays take about 8 minutes to travel from the surface of the sun to the surface of the earth, even though this is a journey staggering 149 million kilometres.  If we had to travel that distance at the speed of an aeroplane, it would take us about 17 YEARS!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/may/22/climate-change-children-education-books

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2 Responses to “A Children’s Book about Climate Change”

  1. Betty Whitehurst says:

    Great Read. Kids younger than the 9-12 years would be very interested and understand as well. The interesting facts are cool. It allows adults to understand and explain it all a bit simpler too.

  2. [...] this year Green Trash Can featured Leo Hickman and his book for children ‘Will jellyfish rule the world?‘ A book about climate [...]

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