Climate Lit: Children’s Literature for Climate Literacy and an Ecological Civilization

Climate change and its evil twin biodiversity loss are the first-ever planetary-scale existential challenge to humanity. This challenge is existential because at stake is the lives of billions, even within our own lifetimes, and the lives of all future human generations. It is existential because any solutions we implement would need to be global, requiring that we act as a species and in the interest of all life forms on the planet—something we’ve never had to do yet. It is also existential because the vast, vast majority of people don’t realize how serious the situation is. Where do we start? How do we translate the clarity science offers about the drivers of climate change into the clarity of collective action that will transform the ecocidal, mechanistic, and exploitative civilization of the present to a sustainable, just, ecological civilization of the future? In particular, what should we do as educators and scholars of children’s literature?

My answer is everything. We should do everything we can, even if it seems impossible, to be part of the push for the transition to a civilization based on values aligned with respect for all life and the planet. Despite the odds, we still have a chance to turn this around. We are still able to contain global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels and avoid the much worse consequences of higher warming under which the survival of our globally-connected, technologically advanced civilization becomes uncertain. To do so, as repeatedly stressed in reports by Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, will require unprecedented transformational changes in all aspects of how our global society is organized, and at a speed and scale for which there is no historical precedent.

What might these “unprecedented transformational changes” be when applied to our field? As educators and scholars of children’s literature, how can we be part of the effort to stop the ongoing demolition of the planet and help create an ecological civilization? I believe there’s much we can do in our teaching, scholarship, and service. For starters, paraphrasing Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche, we should recognize that our civilization is locked in a “single story”: a magical thinking narrative in which our future is one of accelerating expansion, including into space, with more of everything and infinite growth—especially for benevolent billionaire overlords. To break the spell of this dangerous illusion, we need people everywhere to wake up to the urgency of the threat and to the possibility of creating a just, sustainable future for everyone. We need universal climate literacy. We need education for young Earthlings that builds universal climate literacy across all subject areas, across all grade levels, and across the globe. And because human minds are designed to learn through stories, children’s literature is central to this effort.

This is the vision behind Climate Lit: an open access resource hub for teaching climate literacy with children’s literature and media that I founded with my colleague Lara Saguisag in May 2021. Our mission is to provide all resources teachers need to do climate literacy work in their classrooms: 1) a database of books, films, games, and other narrative media useful for climate literacy education; 2) a glossary of terms; 3) events, seminars, and trainings; and 4) a pocket journal for practitioner-oriented content—from lesson plans and modules to teacher reflections, discussions, summaries of scholarship, and lists of recommendations.

Climate Lit is designed as a collaborative hub that connects the expertise of one group with the needs of another. We want to draw on the expertise of scholars, educators, librarians, editors, teachers, authors, publishers, critics, and everyone who works with narrative media for young people and connect it with the needs of teachers who are too busy to do this research but committed to implementing climate literacy in their work. Climate literacy education happens in actual K-12 classrooms, not in academic publications, and so our primary audience is teachers. Unlike academics, they are the boots on the ground in the current push for an ecological civilization. The goal of Climate Lit is to give our teachers all the tools they need.

If you want to read more about the power of children’s literature to combat the climate crisis, please see the special issue of The Lion and the Unicorn on children’s literature and climate change (coedited by Lara Saguisag and me) and my recent piece in YES! Magazine. Feel free to contact me with any questions you have.

For Climate Lit to succeed—to become a useful resource for teachers across the world—we will need a massive, MASSIVE team of contributors. If you are a scholar, author, critic, librarian, or any other professional with expertise in children’s texts and media, we could use your help. By contributing your expertise, you can stand up for your Mother Planet and be part of the change we need.

I want to close with a few thoughts on the last public appearance of late Sir Ken Robinson, recorded from his London home during lockdown in August 2020. Many of you are probably familiar with Robinson’s work on creativity, diversity, and imagination in education. In this last talk, called “Creating a New Normal”, Robinson identified climate change and our disconnect from the natural world as the two greatest challenges facing us today. According to Robinson, the pre-Covid “normal” was an institutionally-sanctioned state of collective insanity. Instead of returning to doing things that are unsustainable and extremely harmful, we can now completely reimagine education. The factory model we have used so far, Robinson says, is as destructive as industrial monocrop agriculture—destructive to the planet, animals, plants and to human capacities as well. Our opportunity now is to discard the educational equivalents of monocrops, pesticides, and chemical fertilization. To reimagine education so that it enables us to “make a settlement with the Earth, plants, animals” and all life. We need education based on compassion, collaboration, creativity, and diversity. The way I understand Robinson’s call is that our new normal requires education steeped in climate literacy. Climate Lit is a project that can move us in that direction and help us build coalitions that will transform our society.

Continue the Conversation:

Join Marek Oziewicz on Wednesday, February 23, 2022 for a talk on "Creating Universal Climate Literacy with Children’s Literature and Media." RSVP by February 21 to justyna.deszcz-tryhubczak@uwr.edu.pl.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Marek Oziewicz (he/him) is the Sidney and Marguerite Henry Professor of Children’s and Young Adult Literature at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. He is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Climate Lit and studies the Anthropocene as a challenge to our story systems. His recent publications include a special issue of The Lion and the Unicorn on Children’s Literature and Climate Change (co-edited with Lara Saguisag), and a collection Fantasy and Myth in the Anthropocene: Imagining Futures and Dreaming Hope in Literature and Media (coedited with Brian Attebery and Tereza Dedinová).