Books For Children And Young People About Environmental Activism

Ann Lazim

There are many books published for children about environmental issues – almost every publisher seems to have produced at least one explanatory book about climate change. 

Two good examples are Climate Action by Georgina Stevens (illus. Katie Rewse) and Climate Crisis for Beginners by Andy Prentice and Eddie Reynolds  (illus. El Primo Ramón) one of a series that encourages critical thinking.

Here I’ve focused on highlighting some recent books about environmental activism, as that was the main focus of the IBBY UK 2024 conference ‘Evolution of the Eco Warrior’. Several of them were created by writers and illustrators who spoke at this conference.

Significant activist authors have adapted books they have written for adults to address children and young adults too. Naomi Klein’s How to Change Everything provides young people with the background and information they need to understand the climate crisis from scientific, economic and political viewpoints and explain it to others. The urgency for humans to act locally and globally to achieve change is demonstrated clearly. As the author says: ‘kids are often taught about environmentalism not in terms of how whole industries and economic systems cause climate change but in terms of things individuals can do, such as recycling and riding a bikeinstead of driving a car. These actions are important, and we all need to do our part. But unless they are combined with bigger changes, they won’t really rock business’s boat – and therefore they won’t make a significant impact on climate change.’

Among UK based activists, Mikaela Loach is a very strong voice. Her book for adults and older teenagers It’s Not That Radical has been followed by one for middle grade readers Climate Is Just the Start. Both books make clear the links between capitalism and the climate crisis, recognising interconnectedness and where power lies and the necessity of tackling injustice and inequalities. Mikaela Loach demonstrates how the urgency of climate change has made us move from specifically focusing on conservation – she says ‘What really thrills me isn’t the idea of preservation; it’s the idea of transformation.’ Her approach is direct and personal, encouraging young people to question. She stresses the significance of taking collective action – not just highlighting the work of a few inspirational ‘heroes’. Importantly she says ‘When you’re trying to convince people of things, it’s better to use stories, rather than just statistics.’ Hearing and reading stories of individuals as well as collective narratives can be both informative and inspirational.

Dara McAnulty’s Diary of a Young Naturalist is an essential read for adults and young people. It reveals how Dara’s deep engagement with nature has led him to play his part in fighting for the natural world in ways that feel right for him and his openness about his autism is part of that. While he is clear about not wanting to be the centre of attention his unique perspective is moving and motivating. He says that ‘conservation has always been a topic discussed around our dinner table, on our walks, at bedtime. All the time. It is part of the fabric of my being’. He has since written three ‘Wild Child’ books, illustrated by Barry Falls, that speak very directly to child readers, taking them on a personal journey, introducing them to facts and phenomena that fascinate him and encouraging exploration. His love of lore and language as well as his respect for nature shine through in the poetic text which is carefully integrated with the illustrations. The steps on the journey alternate with practical projects but the emotional connection with nature is always present.

Mya-Rose Craig is another significant young UK based activist. In her autobiography Birdgirl she describes growing up in a family of combined British-Bangladeshi heritage with whom she has travelled the world to see and learn about birds on every continent. She shows how her life experiences have led to becoming a campaigner for the environment and equal rights – 

‘I was just as invested in the survival of the species as I was in watching them.’ 

Her realisation that VME (Visibly Minority Ethnic) People have not been sufficiently included in these issues led to her founding the charity Black2Nature. 

Her work as a campaigner has brought Craig into contact with and awareness of many other young people around the world engaged as contributors to this vital work and in We Have a Dream she highlights the lives and activities of ‘30 Young Indigenous People of Colour Protecting the Planet’ – the book’s subtitle. Each person’s specific dream and their ethnicity are stated as this often has a strong link to the ecological projects with which they are involved.

While this book highlights individuals, there are frequent reminders that individual and collective activism needs to combine with addressing the powerful in order for wider change to occur. Yujin Kim with Youth 4 Climate Action Korea is suing the South Korean government as itsr greenhouse gas emission target is inadequate. Ander Congil Ross takes part in local clean-up projects alongside being an organiser in Spain’s climate strike movement demanding action from political leaders. Vanessa Nakate organised a strike against the Ugandan government’s inaction on climate change and went on to found Youth for Future Africa. At a 2020 conference of climate activists, Nakate was cropped out of a photograph that then showed only four white climate activists. This demonstrates an important reason for a book like this one in the struggle against racist erasure linked in to combating climate change. 

Craig is in one of the activists featured in Nature Heroes, Lily Dyu’s second book of brief biographies, a companion volume to Earth Heroes. Each chapter draws the reader in by describing an incident from the person’s life and, while the focus is on individuals thereby providing human interest, there is continual acknowledgement of the collective action needed to combat climate change and destruction of the planet. Dyu has also produced The Amazing Power of Activism a useful short guide to broader historical and current activism.

Emma Reynolds started the first global illustrated climate campaign #KidLit4Climate and received thousands of illustrations from around the world. This led to her pulling together the graphic novel collection Drawn to Change the World in which the stories of 16 youth climate activists are depicted by 16 artists. Each four page comic strip story is followed by information about what each activist is doing now and the book is packed with additional material and ideas that inform and encourage activism in its readers.

Other graphic novels with a focus on environmental issues include Saving Sunshine  by Saadia Faruqi and Shazleen Khan in which a quarrelsome twin brother and sister come together to save a loggerhead turtle and Nora Dåsnes’s Save Our Forest! originally published in Norwegian, in which a group of children battle to get adults to listen to them when the forest close to their school is threatened with destruction to make way for a car park.

It’s vital that young people understand the wider political context around climate change and environmental activism as well as doing what they can individually and collectively, and the seeds of this understanding can be sown early. As Greta Thunberg has said ‘Noone is too small to make a difference’. There are a number of picture books which focus on ‘cleaning up the beach’ and care needs to be taken that the activities are seen to be part of a wider picture. In Clean Up! by Nathan Bryon and Dapo Adeola young activist Rocket and her mum and brother Jamal travel to the small Caribbean island where her grandparents run an animal sanctuary. When she realises the damage plastic is doing to wildlife, she makes sure everyone on the beach knows about it and organises a Clean-Up Crew. The story ends with a reminder about continuing to ‘clean up’ so that one day the whales will return. Rocket’s grandfather tells her ‘one day you are going to change the world’. She clearly takes this message to heart as in Speak Up!, the next book about her, she leads a successful protest campaign to save her local library which is under threat of closure. Rocket’s positivity is just the kind of thing that Mikaela Loach is talking about, manifested in a story for young children.

Ken Wilson-Max’s Aqua Boy Aaron is also engaged in cleaning up the beach with his family who are ocean guardians. An encounter with an octopus encourages him to swim underwater and learn more about the world below the sea. There’s more information in an appendix about protecting the ocean and octopuses. In Wilson-Max’s book Eco Girl young ‘sapling’ Eve learns to nurture a baobab tree. 

Neal Layton’s A Planet Full of Plastic and A Climate in Chaos are both subtitled ‘and how you can help’. He uses an illustration style that blends cartoons and collage combined with explanatory and accessible language that also uses imagery to enable children to understand sophisticated scientific concepts. He shows how the current climate crisis on Planet Earth has been reached and what humans need to do to tackle this, at individual, organisational and global levels, describing some initiatives that are already taking place along the way. A third volume in his Eco Explorers series A World Full of Wildlife and How You Can Protect It looks at biodiversity. 

Layton has illustrated some of books by prolific author Nicola Davies whose wide range of books about the natural world embrace the need for humans to take better care of the planet we live on. Many are non-fiction with a narrative at their heart and she has written fiction and poetry too. A recent example of her work is One World. 24 Hours on Planet Earth. Two children explore the world, seeing what is happening at the same moment when it is midnight in London. They see how climate change is causing difficulties for wildlife in many places and the text suggests how many of these could be overcome. The final words urge ‘the sleepers to WAKE UP because tomorrow is already here.’ Jenni Desmond’s pictures illustrate what a beautiful natural world we live in and the explanatory endnotes she has written with Davies highlight their motivation for creating this book. 

Inclusion of much of the fiction about environmental issues and young people’s growing awareness and activism would require another article, so I’ll end with just one thoughtful novel that I think has been under-recognised. Burning Sunlight by Anthea Simmons sets out the urgency around tackling climate change viewed through the eyes and actions of two 12 year-olds. Zaynab is from Somaliland and is living in Devon – her father is an economics professor working on a project on climate change and environmental sustainability. Zaynab feels his engagement with an international fossil fuel company that claims to be helping Somaliland is an exercise in dangerous greenwashing. She teams up with school friend Lucas to campaign about the climate crisis with some dramatic results. The conversations Zaynab has with her father and headteacher reveal a variety of views and attitudes to dealing with the crisis but it is Zaynab’s and Lucas’s thoughts, feelings and actions that take centre stage.

Bibliography

Bryon, Nathan (illus. Dapo Adeola) (2020) Clean Up! London: Puffin

Bryon, Nathan (illus. Dapo Adeola) (2023) Speak Up! London: Puffin

Craig, Mya-Rose (illus. Mick Manning) (2022) Birdgirl London: Jonathan Cape

Craig, Mya-Rose (ed) (illus. Sabrena Khadija) (2021) We Have a Dream London:
Magic CatPublishing

Dåsnes, Nora (2024) (trans. from Norwegian, Lise Lærdal Bryn) Save Our Forest! London: Farshore

Davies, Nicola (illus. Jenni Desmond) (2022) One World. 24 Hours on Planet Earth London: Walker

Dyu, Lily (illus. Jackie Lay) (2019) Earth Heroes London: Nosy Crow

Dyu, Lily (illus. Ekaterina Gorelova and Ana Seixas) (2023) The Amazing Power of Activism Oxford: Oxford University Press

Dyu, Lily (illus. Jackie Lay) (2025) Nature Heroes London: Nosy Crow

Faruqi, Saadia (illus. Shazleen Khan) (2023) Saving Sunshine New York: First Second

Klein, Naomi with Rebecca Stefoff (2021) How to Change Everything. The Young Human’s Guide to Protecting the Planet and Each Other London: Penguin

Layton, Neal (2019) A Planet Full of Plastic London: Wren & Rook Layton, Neal (2020) A Climate in Chaos London: Wren & Rook

Layton, Neal (2021) A World Full of Wildlife London: Wren & Rook

Loach, Mikaela (2023) It’s Not That Radical. Climate Action to Transform Our World London: Dorling Kindersley

Loach, Mikaela (illus. Lauri Johnston) (2025) Climate is Just the Start New York: Bright Matter Books

McAnulty, Dara (2020) Diary of a Young Naturalist Beaminster: Little Toller Books

McAnulty, Dara (2021) Wild Child: A Journey through Nature (illus. Barry Falls) London: Macmillan

McAnulty, Dara (2022) A Wild Child’s Book of Birds (illus. Barry Falls) London: Macmillan

McAnulty, Dara (2025) A Wild Child’s Guide to Nature at Night (illus. Barry Falls) London: Macmillan

Prentice, Andy and Reynolds, Eddie (illus. El Primo Ramón) (2021) Climate Crisis for Beginners London: Usborne

Reynolds, Emma (2023) Drawn to Change the World. 16 Youth Climate Activists. 16 Artists New York: HarperAlley

Simmons, Anthea (2021) Burning Sunlight. London: Andersen Press

Stevens, Georgina (illus. Katie Rewse) (2024) Climate Action London: Little Tiger

Thunberg, Greta (2019) No One is Too Small to Make a Difference London: Penguin

Wilson-Max, Ken (2022) Eco Girl. Burley Gate, Herefordshire: Otter-Barry Books

Wilson-Max, Ken (2024) Aqua Boy. Burley Gate, Herefordshire: Otter-Barry Books

Ann Lazim has been a member of the IBBY UK committee since the national section was revived in the mid 1990s. She has had a range of roles including chair, secretary and 2012 international congress organiser and was on the international executive 2002-2008. Since retiring as librarian at CLPE (Centre for Literacy in Primary Education) she has organised events for the UK section including the annual conference. She edits reviews for Historical Novels Review and is on the jury of the NEEV Children’s Book Award, India.