Global by Eoin Colfer and Andrew Donkin

In this graphic novel, two teens living in very different parts of the world, must deal with the effects of climate change.

Twelve-year-old Sami lives with his grandfather in their village on the Bay of Bengal in India. Due to the rising sea level, they once again have to move their home further inland. Each season sees them having to work harder to catch fewer fish, further out into the ocean. Sami has no idea why this is. If they don't catch fish, they cannot eat. The next day Sami and his grandfather land a huge catch of fish.

When they come to shore, they find there are new people from Myanmar in the village. Grandpa gives away some fish for these starving people to eat. But they also see that someone has stolen their home while they were away. While talking to the people, a deadly storm strikes. They take the family who tried to steal their home to the safety of higher ground.

A mudslide following the heavy rains destroys the village and Sami's home. They work together with the new people to clear away the mud and rebuild. Sami finds an old shirt that reminds him of his father and the loss of his parents, and his mother's lucky knife. Against his grandpa's wishes, Sami sneaks out in the canoe to see if he can find the knife on the ocean floor. But his determination to find the knife places him in danger as another storm approaches. Can he make it safely back to shore before disaster strikes?

Fourteen-year-old Yuki lives in a town in northern Canada, inside the Arctic circle. Global warming has changed bear behaviour in the far north. Polar bears and grizzly bears are interbreeding, creating a new bear, called grolars who do not have the skills to hunt on ice or catch salmon in the rivers. Yuki wants to do something about this. Lately, there have been more bears in town looking for food. Yuki believes these bears are grolars and not polar bears. With her mother at work, she doesn't go to school but decides to see if she can find out.

Yuki and her dog Lockjaw (Locky) are attempting to track the bear. She hopes to get one good picture of the bear to prove that these bears are grolars. However, when Yuki and Locky are attacked by a bear she is knocked onto a small ice floe in a river. Locky confronts the bear but is also knocked off. When Yuki awakes, she and Locky now find themselves lost. With few skills to survive in the snowy, cold Arctic, Yuki encounters dangerous ice, methane lakes and hungry bears as she struggles to travel home.

Discussion

In this graphic novel, Colfer and Donkin tackle the topic of global warming and climate change. To accomplish this, they present two stories, one set in Canada's high Arctic and the second in India's Bay of Bengal. In these stories, both characters, Yuki in the High Arctic and Sami in the Bay of Bengal relate how their villages have experienced drastic changes due to climate change. 

For Yuki it's the presence of hungry bears in town, bears she believes are grolars - a cross between polar bears and grizzly bears. Yuiki notes that these bears are starving because they do not have the hunting skills to feed themselves. Global seems to suggest that this hybridization is the result of climate change, but in fact hybridization has occurred in the past but generally doesn't persist. In other words, it is an ongoing behaviour between the brown bear and polar bear populations in the Arctic, but tends to be temporary. It therefore, is not necessarily the result of climate change. Dr. Evan Richardson, a polar bear research biologist with Environment and Climate Change Canada states that polar bears evolved from brown bears to live in the far north and notes that hybridization has occurred before. According to a recent article by Richardson (2021) there hasn't been a grolar or pizzly observed since 2014.

What has changed however is the number of polar bears sighted in towns like Churchill, Manitoba, as they forage for food. The change is due to the changes in the way sea ice is forming and melting in Hudson Bay, possibly as a result of climate change in the high Arctic. Ice is forming earlier in the late fall, allowing for bears to cross over to Churchill on their way to their winter hunting of seals on the ice in Hudson Bay.

Yuki's story does focus on the impact of melting Arctic ice and how this creates problems for bears who need the ice to hunt seals in the winter and early spring. If the ice melts too quickly, it is much more difficult for polar bears to capture the fat-rich seals they require to replenish their bodies after or before hibernation. The warming climate has affected the permafrost as well, leading to the abandonment of roads and the release of methane.

For Sami, increased storms and rising sea levels are directly impacting his entire village, meaning that homes are being lost to the sea. Sami has lost his parents during a storm and is now living with his elderly grandpa, trying to earn a living by fishing. The storms are also impacting the fish populations, driving them further from the shore. Sami and his grandpa note that there are fewer fish and they must travel further out to sea to fish. There is no mention of the impact of over-fishing by the coastal population or large scale fisheries in the bay.

Research has shown that the sea level in the Bay of Bengal has been slowly rising over the last few decades and could significantly rise in the future. This rise is due partly to tectonic subsidence as well as to hydrological effects (for example, excessive rainfall, glacial meltwater due to climate change) . This rise in sea level affects the mangrove forest which is located along the Bay of Bengal and which protects the shoreline from the storms. The rise in sea level also means a loss of land to those living on the shores, forcing them inland and changing the dynamics of families and communities. Colfer and Donkin describe many of these impacts through Sami's story. Sami and his grandpa are often forced to move their home inland. Their impact of their displacement is shown when a mudslide after a storm destroys the village. They work for five days to reclaim the land, rebuild and then repair their nets. 

Global offers young readers a somewhat simple overview of the issue of global warming and climate change while telling an exciting and engaging story. It shows how rising sea levels can directly impact many different communities around the world. The focus on this graphic novel is of two communities especially at risk, highlighting the human impact as well as the environmental changes. A map at the back shows the locations of Yuki and Sami, demonstrating that the topic is a "global" issue - hence the title. The beautiful illustrations were created  by ink on paper with digital colouring from Photoshop and really enhance the story telling. 

The authors have included a short graphic note at the back titled What is Global Warming? While this covers the basics of global warming, the solutions offered, such as moving from fossil fuels to renewable energy are controversial and by no means the definitive answer. It's unlikely that we can power modern society entirely by renewable energy options. Most of the materials we take for granted such as items used in medicine, in construction, agriculture, computers, transportation and other sectors, rely heavily on fossil fuel production. Modern life has come about because of the use of petroleum products. These cannot be easily and quickly replaced. And some forms of renewable energy, such as the production of EV batteries rely heavily on the use to very toxic heavy and rare earth metals. 

While it is evident our climate is different from the climate decades ago, this may also be a natural part of Earth's history, with fluctuations between periods of colder climate and warmer climate. Humans are a part of a much larger system. We need to focus on better, sustainable stewardship of our beautiful planet. Still, Global offers a starting point for young readers to consider the issue, to see the human impact, especially on children and to consider potential solutions to the climate change we are currently experiencing.

Overall, Global is another great effort by this author duo!

Book Details:

Global by Eoin Colfer and Andrew Donkin

Naperville, Illinois: Sourcebooks Young Readers    2023

Our House Is On Fire: Greta Thunberg's Call To Save the Planet by Jeanette Winter

Our House Is On Fire is a children's picture book that focuses on telling the story of teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg. Her story begins in the city of Stockholm, where Greta who is quoted as stating "All my life I've been invisible..." is the lonely girl who sits at the back of the classroom and never says anything. After a presentation by her teacher on climate change, Greta who could focus for hours on anything, found her attention drawn solely to this topic.

After watching films and doing hours of reading on climate change, Greta began to focus on the many horrible natural disasters that were taking place in the world.

Greta became so concerned about climate change that "She barely ate or spoke." and she decided to do something. She went on strike from school and sat with a sign in front of Sweden's parliament. Every Friday, Greta would go on strike from school. After all, "What use is school without a future?" Soon she was joined by other students and their school strikes were noticed and spread. Eventually, Greta was invited to speak at the United Nations climate talks in Poland and at thethe World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. She wanted the world to panic as she was.

Discussion

Our House Is On Fire is piece of alarmist nonfiction in the format of what appears to be a benign picture book for children. It pretends to tell the story of Greta Thunberg, but is a piece of propaganda promoting climate change ideology to our youngest citizens, without context, fact or balance.  It is something parents should be aware of and that their children may be exposed to in school.

Greta Thunberg is presented as a lonely child who is largely ignored by her classmates until she learned about climate change from her teacher. There is no mention that Greta was a mere eight-years-old when her obsession with climate change began.  In Our House Is On Fire, Greta is said to have focused on an entire list of climate catastrophes; "She saw ice melting into the sea, disappearing. She saw mighty winds and torrential rains howling across the lands. She saw coral reefs, deep down in the sea, pale as ghosts, bleached by the warming waters. Greta saw living creatures everywhere, struggling to stay alive. Greta saw floodwaters covering houses and people and animals. She saw cities swallowed under rising oceans. She saw the smoldering sun scorch the earth, leaving it bone dry. She saw blazing wildfires, racing through the forests." 

Clearly Greta was a young girl obsessed and terrorized by these events, unable to process them or place them within the larger context of our planet's ecosystem. For example, tsunamis are rare, blizzards are a normal part of winter weather as are hurricanes in the summer. Forest fires such as the ones that were burning in the Amazon jungle in the summer of 2019, are part of the natural ecosystem and its rejuvenation process. There is no explanation of the role of media in all this. Media bias has focused on "sexy topics" such as that relating to the Amazon jungle while no mention was made by the media of the forest fires that also occur annually in Africa.

This obsession left Greta sad and unable to eat or speak. To her, the future was bleak and full of despair. There is no mention of the fact that Greta Thunberg, in light of her behaviour, was then diagnosed with Aspergers, a developmental disorder characterized by difficulties with social interaction, as well as the tendency to obsessively focus on one topic . One wonders where her parents where to calm her fears and help her put events like natural disasters into perspective. Instead, they fed her fears, becoming vegan and giving up air travel, something that cost her mother her opera career and likely has had little if any impact on world CO2 levels.

With "...each day more unhappy than the next..." Greta began to act on her fears. She went on a school strike and eventually spoke at world events. She told people, "I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I feel every day...I want you to act as if the house was on fire." Greta blamed all adults for what is happening.

Filled with these alarmist sentiments, Our House Is On Fire, ostensibly a biography, presents a very simplistic approach to a complex problem. There is no context to the issue of climate change. Instead children are presented with numerous scenarios of natural disasters some of which have never happened (such as cities being swallowed by rising seas) in a way that may be frightening and overwhelming. This picture book plays on children's fears in very destructive and manipulative way. It tells children they cannot trust their own parents to care for their future. It never mentions that each generation has done things that the next sees it might do better. There is no balance because there is no balance in Greta's approach either.

It's impossible to talk about Greta Thunberg without mentioning climate change. But such treatment should be honest, open and realistic. It should not work to alarm young children in the hopes of making them act out of panic. Greta wondered what good attending school would be. She need only have looked to young Boyan Slat who is working to clean the oceans of plastic waste with his invention. With her despairing, frantic and panicked message, Thunberg is no model for young children to aspire to.


Book Details:

Our House Is On Fire by Jeanette Winters
New York: Beach Lane Books       2019

The Here And Now by Ann Brashares

Ethan first saw the girl on April 23, 2010 when he was fishing. The air over the river seemed to change, to shimmer and quiver. Ethan was sucked into what seemed like a vortex and then thrown to the ground. After this was over, a girl, his own age was standing naked, wet and shivering on the river bank. She has what appeared to be a bruise but was in fact a number, 51714. Ethan offered her his sweatshirt and she walked away towards the bridge.

For the next two and half years Ethan thought he imagined what happened. "Until the first day of his sophomore year when the very same girl walked into his precalculus class and sat down one seat behind him."

Prenna James along with a thousand other people arrived on April 23, 2010 from the future - the year 2098. On the fourth anniversary of their arrival, April 23, 2014, sixteen-year-old Prenna is in a church, with the rest of her community, reciting the twelve rules they have had to learn and that are critical to their survival. Their community consists of nine leaders who make policy and twelve counselors who pass on those policies. They are refugees from future filled with blood plague - dengue fever that was spread by mosquitoes and which has decimated the world.

Prenna came here with her mother, both of them immune to the blood plague. Her father did not time travel with them, refusing at the last minute. Prenna's two younger brothers died in the third dengue fever epidemic, known as the blood plague, the year before she time-travelled back to 2010. In this new time, Prenna is amazed by the lushness of the world around her with the variety of animals and birds.

After the ceremony Prenna and her friends, Katherine, Jeffrey Boland, Juliet Kerr, and Dexter Harvey get together in Central Park where they relax. Prenna feels alone and isolated. No one ever talks about life in Postremo or how they came to be here, what really connects them together. Instead Prenna feels more like an actor in a large stage production. "'Sometimes I only hear what we don't say. I only think the things I shouldn't think and I remember what I should forget. I hear the ghosts in this room, all the people we lost in our old life who are crying out to be remembered. But we never do remember them. The whispers of things we feel and don't say -- I hear them too...I want to feel something. I really do. But it's only the absence I feel, just the wishing and wanting where there is nothing. I just feel lonely."

When she dances with one of the boys from her own time she thinks of Ethan Jarves. Prenna knows that Ethan suspects there is something not right about her. He has this expectant look like they have met before. Prenna suffered amnesia and does not remember the time immediately before or after her time travel meaning that she likely does not remember her brief encounter with Ethan in 2010.

One day after a false bomb scare at her school, Ethan tells her that the homeless person he knows, affectionately dubbed Ben Kenobi, wants to meet her. Ben tells her that soon there will be a "moment in time when the entire path of the future shifts" and that she may need to act. He doesn't know all the details but he knows when it will happen. He tells her there is a murder about to take place this year, on May 17, 2014 and that this one event will change the course of history and create the future that she comes from - a future in which the planet is dying and its inhabitants are succumbing to a horrible plague for which there is no cure. The man who commits the murder told Ben about it before he died but in 2014 he is still alive and planning to murder. At the time of his death, he knew what he had done, the harm that resulted and he asked Ben to prevent him from doing it. Ben tells Prenna that her people say they are here to do something to help the future be better, to prevent the plagues but in fact they are doing nothing. They are hiding here, in this time, enjoying the life they have here. Prenna now understands the significance of the number that was written on her arm when she arrived in 2010.

Prenna believes that the glasses she wears record all her conversations but they must wear them since without them their vision is poor. Since Ben removed her glasses during their conversation, the counselors have no idea what they spoke about. Mr. Robert meets with her the next day to find out waht they spoke about and to warn her away from him. Prenna tells her friend Katherine about meeting the homeless man and then Ethan tells her the strange experience he had when he was thirteen and fishing by the river. Both of these events result in another visit and warning from Mr. Robert but also the removal of her friend Katherine.

Prenna receives a phone call from Ben telling her that he traveled through the time path, twenty-four years after Prenna's group and arrived in the same place at the same time. He urges Prenna to tell Ethan, who he says knows more than he's letting on, and to stop wearing the glasses and taking the pills. He tells her that the rules she must follow are not for protecting the time natives (people in 2014) but for controlling Prenna's people. When Prenna tries to seek out Ben once more, she witnesses his murder and realizes his true identity.

Prenna acknowledges the truth of what Ben has told her to Ethan and they decide they need to act. But first Prenna needs to speak with her mother. This results in her being kidnapped by the counselors and taken to a farm to prevent her from acting on May 17. The reader is never really given a reason for why this is happening, but no matter, Ethan springs Prenna from her prison and they head to the storage locker where they discover the information that tells them that a key scientist, Mona Ghali, whom Ethan interned with the previous summer, is murdered by a man named Andrew Baltos at her lab in Teaneck. Ghali it turns out is working on wave energy and her work has all been stolen. Prenna and Ethan must work to prevent Mona's murder and save the future from the scourge of a deadly plague brought on by climate change.

Discussion

The Here And Now starts out with a unique storyline, time travelers on a mission to go back to when a plague that is ravaging their world, began, in order to save it. There's a forbidden romance and a heroine struggling to adapt to life in a different time, experiencing rebellion at all the rules and the totalitarian type of life they lead. However, Brashares fails to develop her premise to the depth it deserves, leaving plenty of questions unanswered as the story moves forward and employing multiple coincidences and contrived events that are neither explained nor developed properly. For example why would a thousand people need to travel to an earlier time to prevent the plague? Such a large number of people would almost certainly increase the chance that someone would inadvertently affect the future in a way that leads to "uncontainable changes". How did they determine that they needed to return to 2010 and not some other year? What is Postremo - a city, a country? How did the time travel work and why were there not more travelers after the initial thousand? Can they time travel only one way? When Prenna discovers the fork in time and goes to her community, one would think these people would want to investigate her claims and act. Instead they kidnap her to prevent her from acting. No explanation is given for their behaviour other than they have gotten comfortable in their new "time".

The novel also suffers from poor pacing; after Prenna and Ethan discover who is to be murdered, they take time out to go shopping, visit the beach and play cards. The reader has to wade through these chapters to get to the climax of the novel - Prenna and Ethan's attempt to prevent Mona's murder. Because this is an action based novel and not a long one at that, characterization is shallow. Neither Ethan nor Prenna's mother are well developed characters.

Brashare's premise for The Here And Now might have worked hds she developed her ideas over the course of two or three novels, taking the effort to more carefully craft her storyline, develop her characters, world build and work out the science.

As most readers know, Ann Brashares is the author of the immensely popular Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series. This novel's unique premise held much promise that was not realized. The novel's ending appears to leave open the possibility of a second book.

Book Details:
The Here and Now by Ann Brashares
New York: Delacorte Press      2014
242 pp.